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<p>The last year has seen a significant increase in the level of recruitment with
a target of deploying an additional 2,500 prison officers in post by the end of 2018.
This has impacted the overall volume of cases handled by our shared services provider,
due to significant increases in the number of applications handled. This has resulted
in backlogs in processing across all of the business.</p><p> </p><p>The right balance
needs to be struck between having staff appropriately security cleared and the speed
at which they can begin employment with HMPPS. Steps have been taken to review the
whole recruitment end-to-end procedure to look at the points in which delays have
or can take place. Action has been taken to address these and the backlog of cases
has been reduced significantly from last year. This in turn, has also resulted in
speedier processing times in security vetting for all staff.</p>
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