Non-Environmental Cost-Benefit News

In 2002/3, sick leave among prison staff in England and Wales cost the taxpayer £80m.

Employees took an average of 14.7 days off through ill health, with more than a fifth taking 11 days or more.

A report by the all-party Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said the service should consider restricting sick pay, like the private sector.

In 2002-03, Prison Service employees took 668,337 sick days - equivalent to a year's work for 3,000 full-time staff - and 13.3 days in 2003/4.

And staff at three institutions took more than 20 days off sick annually - Haslar immigration removal centre in Portsmouth, Liverpool Prison and Hindley young offenders institution, near Wigan.

Latest CBI figures show that the average sickness rate for the private sector is 6.9 days and 8.9 for the public sector.

In private prisons, the figure was 12.5 days a year while in the Scottish Prison Service it was 12.9 days in 2002/3.

The PAC report said: "The Prison Service should consider the costs and benefits of not paying staff for the first three days of any period of sickness absence in line with the approach used by private sector prisons to manage sickness absence."

Committee chairman Conservative MP Edward Leigh told BBC News: "We were promised years ago, our committee, by the Prison Service that they were going to try and get this down. They've woefully failed to meet their targets. "It's undoubtedly true if you look at the private prisons that they have a much better record." He said if the Prison Service were to meet its target, then around 1,000 extra staff would be available for duty, easing the burden on their colleagues.

Prison Officers' Association head Colin Moses said criticism had not taken into account the high levels of assault on prison staff as well as the fact that the service was understrength by almost 2,000 people.

A spokeswoman for the Prison Service said the organisation now had a "strong grip" on sickness management and matters were "expected to improve".

Jayne Blake, governor of the Hindley young offenders institution, where staff took an average of 20 days off sick per year, said the figures should also show how much sick time was due to assaults on staff.

Ms Blake said her institution was tackling high sickness levels and had already cut levels by five days a year.

"We have a large range of interventions varying from occupational health advisers... to counselling and types of physiotherapy.

"Working with the Prison Service is a stressful occupation. We at Hindley deal with young people... Some teenagers are very demanding individuals.

"Members of staff do on occasion get assaulted. Maybe we should remove the periods covered by these assaults from the stats."

BBC News