Lord Beecham – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Beecham on 2015-02-12.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what are the current sickness rates for practitioners in the National Probation Service; and what were the rates for 2013 and 2014.

Lord Faulks

Information on sickness absence rates among National Probation Service (NPS) staff for the period 1 June – 30 September 2014 was published on 17 November in a Management Information Release. The annualised rate of absence for this period in the NPS was 10.6 working days lost per staff year. Information for the whole of 2014-15 will be published in the Management Information Addendum to the National Offender Management Service Annual Report 2014-15.

Information on sickness absence rates in the former Probation Trusts is published annually in the Management Information Addendum to the National Offender Management Service Annual Report. The sickness absence rate for Probation Trusts for April 2013 to March 2014, published on 30 July 2014 was 9.8 working days lost per person.

The NPS statistics are not directly comparable to the annual Probation Trust data, as they relate to different timescales.

We take the health and wellbeing of probation staff extremely seriously and have worked closely with the NPS to support staff. We recognise this has been a challenging time for them and they can be extremely proud of how they have maintained standards throughout the transition period.