Sadiq Khan – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sadiq Khan on 2014-04-03.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what maximum number of staff of each grade could be provided by each prison supplying staff for detached duty in each month since December 2013.

Jeremy Wright

The deployment of staff between prisons on detached duty is a regular and normal part of prison resourcing. It allows staff to be allocated from prisons with the capacity to provide them, to those where additional staffing is required. A nationally co-ordinated detached duty scheme has been operating since 21 October 2013.

The number of staff available /maximum number of staff available for detached duty at any one time is a matter for operational judgement and takes account of overall staff numbers, levels of sickness, prisoner numbers and the regime and security requirements.

The average headcount of Band 3 staff who worked on detached duty during December 2013 was 190, this represents 1.3% of all Band 3 officers. The table below contains a list of prisons broken down by the full-time-equivalent staff allocated and grade, during December 2013.

Some allocations outside of the national scheme continued after October 2013 but are not included in the information provided. London region particularly allocated staff within their own region. Information is collected on the staffing allocated. On occasions the resource is not actually deployed due to changes in local circumstances.

Table: List of prison receiving staff on detached duty by average headcount for December 2013

Staffing figures are provided as at the end of each quarter and the last available figures are for 31 December 2013. Information from after that date is therefore not provided.

All staffing figures have been rounded to the nearest 10 in line with the department’s policy for presenting staffing data.