Source · Select Committees · Justice Committee
Recommendation 6
6
Deferred
Produce a comprehensive 15-year public workforce plan with targets to reduce prison staff vacancies.
Recommendation
The Government must produce a comprehensive, public workforce plan for the prison system (including the women’s and children’s estate) for the next fifteen years, modelled on the process used for the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan, with commencement of that planning process within three months. This plan should include targets to reduce the number of vacancies at each grade. (Recommendation, Paragraph 36)
Government response summary AI-generated
The government responds by acknowledging the recommendation for greater Governor involvement in recruitment and describes ongoing work to design an approach for this, detailing challenges with previous local recruitment pilots, completely deflecting from the recommendation to produce a comprehensive workforce plan.
Summary of the government's response below — read the verbatim text to verify.
Government Response
Deferred
HM Government · verbatim extract
Deferred
17. The Government accepts the recommendation to publish a comprehensive workforce plan—and this will build on the existing workforce planning in place. However, the format and timing for this publication will be determined in the coming months to ensure that resource is not diverted from existing activity to stabilise the workforce and address current operational pressures. 18. We recognise that sufficient, skilled frontline staffing is fundamental to delivering safe, secure and rehabilitative prison regimes to ensure maximum effort to foster improved outcomes in prisons and welcome scrutiny from key stakeholders and other reviews in informing this. We also recognise opportunities to learn from the process used for the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan. We agree that long-term workforce planning is important to ensure the sustainability and resilience of the prison system, and that a strategic approach over the longer term is desirable. In the short term, substantive recruitment efforts will continue at all sites where vacancies exist or are projected, with targeted interventions applied to those prisons with the most need. We are working cross-departmentally to embed good practice on workforce planning across government and are engaging closely with colleagues in the Home Office and the Department for Work and Pensions to ensure alignment with wider domestic workforce strategies.
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