Sadiq Khan – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sadiq Khan on 2014-04-01.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, which prisons were (a) receivers and (b) suppliers of detached duty staff in each month since December 2013.

Jeremy Wright

A nationally co-ordinated detached duty scheme has been operating since 21 October 2013. Information on which public sector establishments have either received or provided staff on detached duty since the beginning of the nationally co-ordinated scheme until the 31 December 2013 is contained in the table below. Some allocations outside of the national scheme continued after October 2013 but is 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.

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. On average over the three month period (October to December 2013), less than 1% of staff were provided on detached duty. A large proportion of the capacity was available from prisons that were in the process of closure or going through a re-role. This process temporarily releases a number of officers who are not supplied for specific occasions but are sent and received on a shift pattern throughout the week.