Transparency data

Unpaid work management information - Guidance

Published 6 November 2025

Applies to England and Wales

Note regarding Project Clean Streets

To date, the unpaid work management information publication has included a subset of data tables for Rapid Deployment Projects - Project Clean Streets.

Rapid deployment work is now delivered as standard in probation regions and is no longer managed separately. As a result, it is proposed to remove this section of the publication from autumn 2026. This means that the last set of data tables which will be available for Project Clean Streets will be for the period up to December 2025. These tables will be published in the next unpaid work management information publication in May 2026.

If the changes announced are likely to cause significant inconvenience, please contact the production team at crosscuttingperformanceenquiries@justice.gov.uk

1. Introduction

This document supplements the biannual unpaid work management information release by providing a guide to the data, as well as definitions and counting procedures used to create these data.

Unpaid work, also known as community payback or community service, is one of the options available to sentencers at court. Individuals can be sentenced to undertake between 40 hours and 300 hours of unpaid work which should be completed within 12 months from sentencing.

The main purpose of unpaid work is to provide punishment and reparation, with individuals carrying out work on projects which benefit their local communities. Individuals are eligible to complete Education, Training and Employment (ETE) programmes as part of their unpaid work requirement, with up to 30% of their hours potentially available to complete the rehabilitative activities.

Data presented in this release commence from April 2022. Data prior to this are affected by the following factors:

• From June 2014 to June 2021, Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) managed medium and low-risk offenders which included the majority of unpaid work cases.
• Since July 2021, probation services have been unified, with unpaid work now managed by the Probation Service.
• During 2019/20 and 2020/21, the delivery of unpaid work was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Many projects and organisations that provided placements were closed, and social distancing rules made it difficult for delivery to continue as normal.

This management information release follows the inter-related offender management statistics quarterly bulletin which provides quarterly statistics on offenders under probation supervision. To note, the offender management statistics quarterly bulletin focuses on community orders and suspended sentence orders, whereas this management information release considers all order types where unpaid work could be included as a requirement.

2. Definitions

2.1 Regions

There are 12 probation regions across England and Wales - 11 probation regions in England and one in Wales. The data in the tables are shown at both the regional level and national level.

In some instances, an individual can be sentenced to a Scottish Community Payback Order with unpaid work whilst residing at a home address in England, Wales or Scotland. These individuals are included under the probation region responsible for managing their order.

Where individuals could not be assigned to a region (for example, due to being managed by a central unpaid work projects team, or due to recording errors), the data have been grouped in the ‘Other’ category for completeness.

2.2 Court orders

The term ‘orders’ used in this release applies to all court orders where unpaid work can be added, which are:

• community order
• suspended sentence order
• youth rehabilitation order
• enforcement order
• supervision default order
• order made in other UK jurisdictions where the case has transferred

2.3 Orders sentenced with unpaid work

Any court order sentenced in the reported time period, where the sentence includes an unpaid work element.

2.4 Unpaid work requirements

Courts can sentence an individual to undertake between 40 hours and 300 hours of unpaid work as a requirement on an order. This is added to the order as a ‘regular’ unpaid work requirement.

In cases where the court order is made more onerous due to breach, an additional unpaid work requirement may be added to the order. Additional requirements appear as a separate requirement in case records and are included in these data.

Unpaid work requirements that are designated to be served consecutively or concurrently (in relation to existing unpaid work requirements) are excluded from this management information release. However, any hours completed under these requirements - whether they are served consecutively, concurrently, or as additional requirements - are included in these data.

2.5 Sentences (starts)

Where a person has been sentenced to an order with a regular unpaid work requirement, the start date is usually the sentence date.

Additional unpaid work requirements can be added to an order after it has started - for example, if the order is breached, the court may decide to add extra unpaid work hours. In these cases, the start date is the date the additional requirement was added.

There may be other circumstances where a different sentence and start date apply; however, these scenarios are generally less common.

2.6 Sessions

Each unpaid work session arranged for the individual. Sessions include the initial induction appointment and any education, training and employment sessions which are applicable to the unpaid work requirement.

2.7 Offered

The Probation Service will notify the individual in advance about the unpaid work sessions which have been arranged for them. To ensure that the individual is given sufficient notice of sessions, these are often arranged in bulk and well in advance of the session taking place. Due to this, some sessions may be cancelled or rescheduled to a later date.

2.8 Attended (credited)

Where a person attends their unpaid work session, the time they spend working will be credited towards the number of hours they have been ordered to complete. This includes where a person attends a session and subsequently fails to comply with instructions or is sent home due to poor behaviour, or where service issues during the day cause a session to be cancelled.

2.9 Terminations

In the context of this release, a termination is recorded where a person, order or unpaid work requirement has ended, and there is no more active involvement. This can be for any of the following reasons:

• completion of the order or requirement
• revocation of the order or requirement (for example, due to ill-health, change in circumstance or commission of a further offence)
• expiry of an order
• activation of a suspended sentence order
• death
• deportation
• transfer to outside of England and Wales.

2.10 Rapid Deployment Projects - Project Clean Streets

Through Rapid Deployment Projects, Probation Community Payback teams work in partnership with local authorities to rapidly clean up instances of antisocial behaviour as part of the government’s action plan. The work includes clearance of fly tipping sites, litter picking and graffiti removal within 48 hours of notification.

Since its launch in 2023, Rapid Deployment Projects - Project Clean Streets has been rolled out in 11 probation regions. There has been no delivery in the East Midlands region within the reporting period of this publication.

2.11 Symbols and conventions

The following symbols have been used throughout the tables in this publication:

Symbol	Description
[x]	Not available
0	Value less than 3
[r]	Revised data

3. Counting procedures

To protect the disclosure of personal information of any individual, reported figures are rounded to the nearest multiple of 5 for presentation in this release. Total figures are also subject to this suppression methodology after calculation, so the sum of numbers in each column may not match the total shown.

3.1 Individuals

In the tables showing the number of individuals, the data count each person only once in each quarter (for example, if a person received more than one order with unpaid work in the quarter, they would only be counted once). If during the same quarter, a person received multiple orders with unpaid work in different regions (for example, if the person moved), they would count once in each region, but once in the overall England and Wales aggregation.

3.2 Start dates

The data count each individual, order, or unpaid work requirement starting in the quarter. For individuals and orders, the count uses the order start date to determine the cases; for unpaid work requirements, the requirement start date is used.

3.3 Caseload

The data count each individual, order, or unpaid work requirement active on the last day of the quarter. See Main definitions - Terminations above for reasons for why an individual, order or requirement may not have active involvement.

3.4 Terminations

The data count each individual, order, or unpaid work requirement terminating in the quarter. For individuals and orders, the count uses the order termination date to determine the cases. For unpaid work requirements, the requirement termination date is used.

3.5 Sessions

The data count each session for each person in the quarter. Where the work has been completed as part of a group project, each person participating in the group will get a unique session and as a result, the project will count multiple times in the sessions data.

3.6 Hours

The data count the total sum of hours offered to all individuals with an unpaid work requirement in the quarter. Where the work has been completed, the number of hours spent working are credited as a total sum in the quarter in which the work was delivered (see definitions for Offered and Attended above).

Following the unification of the Probation Service in 2021, the method of recording of unpaid work hours varied across probation regions, with some regions including hours for travel against work delivered. Data handling practices may be revaluated in future management information releases to align data recording throughout the probation regions in England and Wales.

4. Data sources and quality

Data in this release are drawn from administrative IT systems, namely National Delius (nDelius), the probation case management system. Although care is taken when processing and analysing the returns, the information collected is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system due to possible errors with data entry and processing. The figures shown have been checked as far as practical and have been rounded to the nearest multiple of 5 to manage the quality of these data.

Appropriate data sources were used for these data, identified through engagement with probation staff and colleagues in His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) HQ. This release is published for transparency and represents the Ministry of Justice’s ambition to work in partnership with local authorities as part of the government’s action plan on anti-social behaviour. The Probation Service are responsible for ensuring the accuracy of their data. These data are management information and are subject to potential revision in future releases.

To improve the integrity of data used, a lag of 3 months has been applied to allow staff sufficient time to update and assure these data.

4.1 Accuracy and reliability

These statistics are from management information from case management systems and involve manual data entry. Management information refers to information that is not collected specifically for statistics or research. These data are collected by the Ministry of Justice for uses such as registration and record-keeping.

Although due care has been taken when processing and analysing the returns, as with any large administrative data source, the possibility of errors cannot be eliminated. While the figures shown have been checked as far as practicable, they should be regarded as approximate and not necessarily accurate to the last whole number shown in the tables.

Over time, minor changes are made to recording practices to improve the accuracy of these statistics.

In accordance with Principle 2 of the Code of Practice for Statistics, the Ministry of Justice is required to publish transparent guidance on its policy for revisions. A copy of this statement can be found at: transparent guidance on its policy for revisions.

The 3 reasons specified for statistics needing to be revised are changes in sources of administrative systems or methodology changes, receipt of subsequent information, and errors in statistical systems and processes. Each of these points, and its specific relevance to this publication, are addressed below:

1. Changes in sources of administrative systems or methodology
   This guidance document will clearly state where there have been revisions to data due to changes in methodology or administrative systems. In addition, statistics affected within the publication will be appropriately footnoted.
2. Receipt of subsequent information
   The nature of any administrative system is that data may be received late. Revision mid-year will only be made where it has been deemed that the late data has a major influence on the statistics. All other minor revisions will be published in the next scheduled update.
3. Errors in statistical systems and processes
   Occasionally errors can occur in statistical processes, however procedures are constantly reviewed to minimise this risk. Should a significant error be found, the publication on the website will be updated and an errata slip published documenting the revision.

5. Further information

As well as this bulletin, the following products are published as part of this release:

• Unpaid work management information – Summary
• Unpaid work management information – Data tables
• Unpaid work management information – Project Clean Streets data tables

View more information in our biannual unpaid work management information collection page.

6. Contact

Press enquiries should be directed to the Ministry of Justice press office:
Tel: 0300 790 0711

Other enquiries about these management information should be directed to:
E Stradling 
HMPPS Performance Unit, Analysis Directorate
Ministry of Justice
102 Petty France
London
SW1H 9AJ
Email: crosscuttingperformanceenquiries@justice.gov.uk

General information about the official statistics system of the UK is available from the UK Statistics Authority.