Official Statistics

HMPPS COVID-19 experimental statistics annex: 31 July 2022

Updated 16 September 2022

Applies to England and Wales

Introduction

This statistics release provides data on COVID-19 amongst staff in Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) in England and Wales.

It provides information on:

• Deaths of HMPPS staff after testing positive for COVID-19 or where there was a clinical assessment that COVID-19 was a contributory factor in their death.

• Confirmed COVID-19 cases in HMPPS staff (i.e. positive tests).

• HMPPS staff absent due to COVID-19 sickness.

Tables 1 and 2 in this release cover the period from the beginning of March 2020 at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak to 31 July 2022. Table 3 provides a picture of COVID-19 sickness over time as at monthly snapshot dates from 30 April 2020 to 28 July 2022. These are experimental statistics aimed at providing an idea of the level of COVID-19 sickness absence. Sickness leave due to COVID-19 is categorised under epidemic/pandemic in the Average Working Days Lost (AWDL) tables of Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service workforce quarterly. The data used in the HMPPS COVID-19 Annex is the same as those used in the AWDL tables but the AWDL calculations incorporate additional sickness and absence data from the HMPPS internal HR system which means they are not directly comparable.

Key findings

The key findings in this release, covering March 2020 to July 2022, are:

• 55 HMPPS staff have died having tested positive for COVID-19 within 60 days of the death or where there was a clinical assessment that COVID-19 was a contributory factor in their deaths regardless of cause of death. Of these 31 staff members were directly employed and 24 were non-directly employed ^{[footnote 1]}. There were no deaths relating to COVID-19 of an HMPPS staff member in the six months from February 2022 to July 2022.

• 62,820 HMPPS staff have tested positive for COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic. Of which, 53,112 are directly employed staff from Prisons and Youth Custody Service. The number of new confirmed cases in July 2022 was 5,431.

• 801 staff were absent due to COVID-19 sickness on 28 July 2022.

Background

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been keen public and Parliamentary interest in how the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) and HMPPS are managing the running of prisons and the probation system to limit the spread of the virus while maintaining the core functions of these vital parts of the justice system. Publishing this data aims to bring transparency to the impact of the virus on HMPPS service users and staff. Due to data accuracy issues and the reduced impact that COVID-19 is having on the workforce, we will be pausing publication of this annex indefinitely with the potential that this could be re-introduced if COVID-19 levels rise again.

A separate monthly bulletin containing service user data related to COVID-19 has been published in the official statistics report ‘HM Prison and Probation Service COVID-19 statistics’. This contains data on COVID-19 related deaths and positive test results among service users.

Deaths

HMPPS has taken measures to limit the spread of the virus and to protect staff and service users. However, prisons and probation, like all other sectors in England and Wales have experienced deaths due to COVID-19.

The counting of deaths in prisons and probation are aligned to the Public Health England definition, and reports on deaths where HMPPS staff have died testing positive for COVID-19 or where it was confirmed post-mortem. This consists of:

• Deaths suspected or confirmed to be due to COVID-19.

• Deaths believed to be due to other causes, but where the staff member had tested positive for COVID-19 within 60 days of the death.

From March 2020 to the end of July 2022, 55 HMPPS staff died having tested positive for COVID-19 or where there was a clinical assessment that COVID-19 was a contributory factor in their deaths. This includes 31 directly employed staff and 24 non-directly employed staff. Of the directly employed staff, 24 of these were staff from Prisons and Youth Custody Service and 7 were members of the Probation Service. Staff members have been identified as directly employed if they have been flagged as directly employed within the dataset and the staff member worked in HQ and Area Services, a prison, an Approved Premises, or was part of the Probation Service.

These numbers are too small to make an inference regarding ethnicity disparity.

Positive cases

Since March 2020 there has been antigen testing (swab tests) for both service users and staff (or members of their households) who are symptomatic, which can confirm if they currently have COVID-19.

This data is self-reported with staff members notifying their manager of a positive test result.

The most recent data available is used to categorise the tests based on the result date. This allows for cases added a few days after the month end but with a test result date in the previous month to be captured correctly. In addition, where staff have multiple positive tests within a 90-day period, they are assumed to be from the same infection and are therefore only counted once.

In the period up to 31 July 2022, 62,820 staff have tested positive for COVID-19. Of these positive test results, 9,708 were for non-directly employed staff and 53,112 were directly employed. Ethnicity information for the non-directly employed staff is not held. Of the positive test results for directly employed staff, there was a 65.0% declaration rate for ethnicity (34,517). The proportion of these staff who were of an ethnic minority background was 10.3%. This is representative of HMPPS staff; on average from March 2020 to June 2022, 11.2% of HMPPS staff with declared ethnicity were from an ethnic minority background (declaration rate of 83.6%). In the month ending 31 July 2022 there were 5,431 new confirmed cases.

Figure 1: HMPPS staff cumulative COVID-19 positive cases, as at end of months April 2020 to July 2022

Staff members are recorded as directly employed in this table if they are included in the HQ, Probation Service or Approved Premises data collection.

Recognising the unique environment in prisons, HMPPS are routinely testing frontline staff to bolster the defences against the virus meaning cases can be identified and isolated earlier and quick action can be taken to contain outbreaks and protect the NHS. This, alongside the measures that have been put in place since March 2020, will help continue to limit the spread of the virus and save lives.

HMPPS has been working closely with the Department of Health and Social Care, the NHS, and public health bodies in England and Wales for a number of months to provide COVID-19 tests in prisons. Initially this involved the testing of symptomatic staff and service users; then during the summer of 2020 HMPPS commenced testing of all consenting prisoners, HMPPS employees and non-directly employed staff across 28 prisons in England.

Since autumn 2020 HMPPS began the roll-out of routine testing of frontline staff in prisons to help identify the asymptomatic and break chains of transmission. Since the end of January 2021, this testing has expanded to include rapid testing of all staff. Any staff who test positive through this programme are included in the data presented here.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) holds overall responsibility for testing for COVID-19 both in the community and in secure settings. As such, HMPPS does not hold complete data on staff testing.

Sickness absences

These figures refer to the total number of staff recorded as not working due to sickness absence for suspected COVID-19 on the last working day of the month. This does not necessarily reflect the number of symptomatic staff members; if a symptomatic staff member was able to work from home they would not be captured in these figures. Staff sickness is reported by the manager and the reliability of this data depends on this information being reported accurately.

Between 31 March 2021 and 30 November 2021, staff absences due to COVID-19 sickness have ranged between 244 and 587 before a large increase was recorded on 31 December 2021, where 2,728 staff were absent. This is the highest number of staff absent recorded in the time series and more than double (121.4%) the staff absent on 31 December 2020, where 1,232 staff were absent. Staff absent due to COVID-19 sickness have decreased in the seven months since this peak.

On 28 July 2022, the most recent published date, there were 801 staff absent due to COVID-19 sickness, of which, 703 (87.8%) were for directly employed staff. Staff absences amongst directly employed staff were made up of 591 (84.1%) staff from Prisons and Youth Custody Service (including both public and private establishments) and 101 (14.4%) in the Probation Service. The number of absences amongst staff in Approved Premises and HMPPS HQ & Area Services cannot be disclosed due to low numbers.

Figure 2: HMPPS sickness absences due to COVID-19, as at end of months April 2020 to April 2022

These figures include all members of staff who are not marked as working from home and where the absence category selected is ‘1. Sickness Absence - Respiratory System Epidemic/Pandemic’. If an invalid absence option has been assigned to a staff member then that individual has not been included in these figures. Work is being done to identify how many of these invalid data points should be included within the sickness absence category, it is not expected that many records are affected.

As in Table 2, staff members are recorded as directly employed if they are included in the HQ, Probation Service or Approved Premises data collection. Staff members recorded in the data collection from both public and private prisons are recorded as directly employed if they have been flagged as directly employed within the dataset.

Data Quality

Although care is taken when processing and analysing the returns, the detail collected is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system. Much of the data collected during the COVID-19 pandemic has been done at pace, with recording practices evolving as more is understand about the requirements and conditions faced by HMPPS. Absences towards the end of the reporting period are likely to be less accurate due to delays in reporting. In order to present the timeliest information, the data presented in this report have not been subjected to the usual standard of quality assurance associated with official statistics.

Data on ethnicity of staff for the confirmed cases and staff absences was not directly collected. Employee number was used to link the data collected during the COVID-19 pandemic to our internal records on ethnicity. Therefore there may be some inaccuracies in this data as it relies on the manual input of employee number. HMPPS does not hold ethnicity data on staff working in private establishments.

For transparency, ethnicity breakdowns are provided for each of the three tables. However, investigation into underlying drivers will happen once the information has been fully assured. For example, analysis has not been conducted into whether geographical location of prisons is driving any disparities experienced by HMPPS staff.

Data is not reported over the weekends and was only reported on Tuesdays and Fridays from 17th August 2020 until 29th September 2020, and Tuesdays and Thursdays from 15th February 2022 onward, hence data from the last available day in the month has been used in some cases in Table 3, rather than the last day of the month.

Data collected on non-directly employed staff is reliant on service providers onsite keeping the establishments well informed. There have been some facilities management providers that have been found to report their COVID-19 absences through another route and as such, some of these absences will not be represented in the published data for HMPPS.

On 26th June 2021 more than 7,000 staff from private sector Community Rehabilitation Companies came together with probation staff already in the public sector in the new Probation Service. These staff are captured under ‘Non-directly employed staff’ until this date and ‘Directly employed staff’ as of this date.

Although care is taken when processing and analysing the returns, the detail collected is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system. Much of the data collected during the COVID-19 pandemic has been done at pace, with recording practices evolving through changing conditions and regulations.

Contact points

Press enquiries should be directed to the Ministry of Justice press office:

Tel: 020 3334 3536

Email: [email protected]

Other enquiries about these statistics should be directed to:

Bryce Millard

Email: [email protected]

General enquiries about the statistical work of the Ministry of Justice can be e-mailed to: [email protected]

General information about the official statistics system of the UK is available from: https://uksa.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/about-the-authority/what-we-do/

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Produced by the Ministry of Justice

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1. Non-directly employed staff are those working in HMPPS and private prisons who are not in the direct employment of HMPPS. This includes private prison staff, agency staff and other contractors. ↩