Community Payback Orders – Unpaid work or Other Activity Requirements: February 2025
An Official Statistics Publication for Scotland
The Chief Statistician has released figures on Community Payback Orders (CPOs) unpaid work or other activity requirements today.
The publication covers the changes in rates of progression during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, information on the number of hours imposed by the courts for this requirement and the number of unpaid work hours to be progressed.
In 2023-24, there were 15,100 CPOs imposed by the courts, which included 1.39 million unpaid work hours imposed as part of unpaid work requirements.
There has been an increase of 7% in the number of CPOs issued in the first 11 months of 2024-25, compared to this period in 2023-24.
In February 2025, there was 867,300 unpaid work hours to be progressed. This is an increase of 9% from February 2024.
An estimate of the number of unpaid work hours imposed between February 2024 to January 2025 was in the range of 1.48 to 1.54 million hours. When compared with previous time period this showed an increase of at least 7%. The increase in hours imposed is a contributing factor to the increase in unpaid work hours to be progressed.
Background
Full statistical publication is available on Scottish Government website.
Official statistics are produced in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics.
This information relates to only one of the 10 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. Completing unpaid work requirements takes time and, as a result, there will always be outstanding hours in the system while requirements are being progressed.
The data for this publication comes from four different data sources. Therefore, estimates are used to allow reporting on the same time-frame. Changes to the recent unpaid work hours to be progressed should be treated with caution due to seasonal fluctuation. It is better to look at the overall annual trend than focus on the changes in the last two quarters.