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Officer shortages at HMP La Moye have pushed the prison’s overtime bill to more than £400,000 this year alone, Express has learned.
The cost for January to August 2021 exceeds the total spent on overtime across the entirety of 2020 (£340,695) and is nearly the same amount as the Government has asked the prison to make in savings this year (£420,000), and more than the savings requested for next year (£315,000).
The figures, released to Express under the Freedom of Information Law, shed light on the impact of continuing staffing pressures, which led the prison to impose rotational daily wing lockdowns in September.
Described internally as a ‘restricted regime’, the new system sees prisoners only able to leave their cells for around one hour in total – to wash and to exercise – on their wing’s selected day. Visitor sessions have also been reduced as a result.
Pictured: Visiting has also been cut down under the 'restricted regime'.
Some prisoners, who were already unhappy after being limited to five-and-a-half hours per day outside their cells, and fewer than two hours employment training and education time during the third wave of covid earlier this year, have communicated their frustrations about the recent change to their families.
Last week, the Acting Director General for Home Affairs admitted the situation could go on for “months”.
The data released to Express showed that prison officer overtime bills have fluctuated by month, but gradually crept up towards the end of 2020.
Between January 2020 and September 2021, the prison lost more than 20 members of staff – 16 of which were in its residential accommodation division. Only seven in that division have been replaced.
The most expensive month for overtime was July 2021, when the bill hit £81,000 for more than 2,100 hours' work by 84 workers – just short of £1,000 per head.
CLICK TO ENLARGE: The prison's monthly overtime bill since the beginning of 2020.
That same month, a recruitment drive for new prison officers was launched.
Eight applicants were due to undergo further assessments at the prison in early September, but these sessions were postponed with around just 24 hours’ notice. In mid-October, a new date had still not been provided.
The response to Express’s request under the Freedom of Information Law confirmed that just £783 has been spent on recruitment exercises so far, and no new prison officers have been recruited as yet. They said that any new recruits will start their nine weeks’ training in early January 2022.
Speaking on a recent episode of the Bailiwick Podcast, Prison Governor Susie Richardson said that HMP La Moye had balanced the need to make savings and overtime bill pressures by maintaining open vacancies.
She said that the staffing pressures had come at a time when the ‘Target Operating Model’ – the blueprint for the service’s management structure – was being evaluated.
Ms Richardson said the service was keen not to replace “what we’ve always had… like-for-like”, adding: “This is our opportunity to review the Operating Model, the skills that we need our staff to have and making sure again that the model is as efficient as it can be and where there are opportunities to pull in other departments, redeploying our resource to achieve other bits of work that we might not previously have got to.”
“…There was a [budget] reduction this year, which has been managed through vacancies and we’ve got a further reduction to make next year, but what we want to do is rather than just hold vacancies where they emerge, redesigning the Target Operating Model so that we’ve got a structure that we can afford, so that we can recruit entirely to that model, knowing it’s affordable and we don’t have ad hoc vacancies.”
Asked whether the prison was on track to meet its £735,000 savings for 2021 and 2022, she replied: “The number of vacancies that we have mean that we’re not concerned about finances this year or next year and we’re working really well with the staff on the ground floor who really understand what we’re doing and how we make those decisions so we don’t have any unintended consequences and I genuinely believe that we’ll have a better service even after those reductions.”
Ms Richardson went on to explain that the desired outcome was a service with a “very lean” management structure and more “face-to-face interactions, which is where the real outcomes are for offenders.”
Part of the process will involve reducing duplication in the services provided by the prison and those that the Government is already providing in the community, and can be brought in – some of this around health, and much of it around education.
Giving an example, she explained: “We have a brilliant provision under Customer and Local Services with the Back to Work programme… Rather than us writing our own CV-writing workshops, and having courses around that and interview techniques and preparing prisoners for employment in that way, [we’re] making sure that we’re pulling in the departments that already do that stuff.
“…It also means prisoners aren’t just accessing prison staff, they’re feeling like citizens, they’re already beginning that transition of accessing all of the services in custody that would be open to them out in the community.”
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