Community Payback Orders – Unpaid Work or Other Activity Requirements – May 2024

Management information on unpaid work hours

Key Point: The management information on unpaid work hours to be progressed was relatively stable from May to November 2023. The estimate increased to around 817,100 unpaid work hours to be progressed in May 2024. This is an increase of 5% on May 2023 figure of 780,900.

This management information was previously published in November 2023 at Scotland level as part of the occasional statistical paper: The Effect of COVID-19 on Community Payback Order Unpaid Work or Other Activity Requirements. Since then, three more management information data collections have been added. The data collected quarterly from justice social work is the total outstanding hours for all open unpaid work or other activity requirements excluding those in which there is a breach.

Due to the nature of the data collection progress outlined in the Introduction, the data returned is considered to be estimates. They are subject to revisions and contain statistical approximations when information was not available. These figures give a broad indication at a specific time period. They are also subject to seasonality as illustrated by Chart 1, which shows the number of hours imposed by the court fluctuating throughout the year. This leads to seasonality in the unpaid work hours to be progressed.

There is also a time lag between the data sources in this publication. The management data collection on unpaid work hours is ahead of the published Justice Social Work Statistics by 14 months and from the court’s information by five months. This causes issues in understanding any increases or decreases in the most recent management figures. For example, if the time to progress requirements was constant and there was an increase in hours imposed over this 5 month period, we would expect an increase in the management data estimation. Similarly, if the hours imposed were reduced, we would expect a decrease in the estimation. This is an over-simplification of this process, but it illustrates the issue with the time-lag between the management information and the other data sources.

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. Any increases or decreases may be partly due to seasonality. 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.

Unpaid work requirements are continuously being imposed and, at the same time, existing requirements are being completed. Therefore, there are always unpaid work hours that are being progressed and always outstanding hours in the system due to the time taken to undertake the work. The data from Figure 2, shows that on the 1 April 2023 about 8% of unpaid work requirements imposed during the pandemic years (2019-20 and 2020-21) were being progressed, and that the pattern of progressing requirements was still not at the same rate as the pre-pandemic level. The 8% of requirements outstanding could not be equated to the number of hours to be progressed, as this is not collected in the annual return.

Legend:

A: Second mainland lockdown – January 2021

B: Community Orders (Coronavirus) (Scotland) Regulations 2021 introduced (reducing outstanding hours in relevant orders by 35%) – March 2021

C: Scotland moved to beyond level 0, when the legal requirement for physical distancing and limits on gatherings was removed. Some protective measures did stay in place such as the use of face coverings indoors – August 2021

D: Extended time limits for unpaid work requirements (under the Coronavirus (Scotland) Act 2020) ended – September 2022

The first lockdown occurred in Scotland in March 2020. This data collection was started in May 2020 to support Scottish Government understanding of the effects of COVID-19 on CPO unpaid work requirements. The number of hours being progressed started to increase as the social distancing restrictions impacted the administering of this requirement. This is also reflected in Figure 2, where we see a reduction in the percentages of unpaid work requirements finishing over 2020-21. The number of unpaid work hours outstanding reached its highest point of around 823,700 hours in February 2021.

In March 2021, the Coronavirus (Scotland) Regulations 2021 were introduced. These regulations reduced the number of hours imposed in relevant orders (with exceptions for orders imposed in relation to domestic abuse, sexual offences, or stalking) by 35 per cent. This was to reduce the overall volume of hours to be delivered and ensure the continued effective operation of the community justice system.

After the implementation of the above regulations, the unpaid work hours being progressed reduced to its lowest point (around 577,000) in April 2021. It starts to increase steadily thereafter.

During the year 2022-23, the number of unpaid work hours increased from 683,400 in May 2022 to 748,400 in February 2023. At 1 April 2023, there were 9,096 unpaid work requirements being progressed. The management data collected in May 2023 had about 780,900 unpaid work hours being progressed. In the first nine months of 2023-24 the courts imposed around 991,600 unpaid work hours, which indicates an increase of hours entering the system compared to same time period in 2022-23. During this period, the unpaid hours being progressed was relatively stable.

The most recent figure for hours to be progressed in May 2024, was about 817,100. This was an increase of about 5% on the previous May 2023 figure of 780,900, part of this increase is likely due to increase of unpaid work hours imposed during the first nine months of the financial year for 2023-24. The level in May 2024 was the 2^nd highest value since these figures started being collected in May 2020.