Community Payback Orders

The Chief Statistician has released figures on Community Payback Orders (CPOs) – unpaid work and other activity requirements today.

The publication covers the changes in rates of progression during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, information on number of hours imposed by the courts for this requirement and the number of unpaid work hours to be progressed.

In 2022-23, there were 14,700 CPOs imposed by the courts, which included 1.32 million unpaid work hours imposed as part of unpaid work requirements.

At the start of the financial year 2023-24, there were 9,100 unpaid work requirements being progressed in Scotland.

During April to December 2023, there have been around 991,600 unpaid work hours imposed by courts over these nine months. This has increased by at least 2% from the same time-period in 2022.

The most recent estimate for May 2024 showed 817,100 unpaid work hours were to be progressed, an increase of about 5% from May 2023 figure of 780,900.

Background 

The full statistical publication.

Official statistics are produced in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics.

This information relates to only one of the ten requirements that can be imposed for Community Payback Orders (CPOs). The unpaid work or other activity requirement (abbreviated to unpaid work) is one of the most common to be imposed. Unpaid work requirements are continuously being imposed and, at the same time, existing requirements are being completed or terminated. Therefore, there are always unpaid work hours that are being progressed in the system due to the time taken to do this work.

The data for this publication comes from three different data sources. There is a time delay between these data sources. The management information for unpaid work hours to be progressed is the most current. Changes between the recent quarters of management information should be treated with caution due to not knowing the number of unpaid work hours being imposed by courts which may contribute to the trend. It is better to look at the overall trend than focus on the changes in the last two quarters. The data cannot provide any explanation on unpaid work hours that have been completed or added between data collection points.

Further statistics on Justice Social Work.