Community Payback Orders – Unpaid Work or Other Activity Requirements – February 2026
This publication is about the number of hours of unpaid work or other activity hours to be progressed as part of community payback orders and how this has changed over time.
Part of
Unpaid work requirements progress to 2024-25
Key point: As of the 1 April 2025, there were 9,800 unpaid work requirements to be progressed. Of these, 94% were imposed by the courts in 2023-24 and 2024-25. The percentage of unpaid work requirements finished within the year of imposition or the following year has increased to 85% since the pandemic years of 71%. This is lower than pre-pandemic progression, which was around 92%.
There were 18,172 CPOs in total in existence on 31 March 2025. This was the largest figure in the last ten years.
Sixty-seven per cent of these CPOs (12,180) had an unpaid work requirement. Of the 12,180 CPOs with unpaid work requirements, the progression of the unpaid work requirement as of 1 April 2025 was:
- 18% (2,210) had successfully completed
- 1% (147) had terminated unsuccessfully
- 81% (9,823) were being progressed.
(Please note that some of these CPOs have other requirements being progressed at the same time and may be completed after the unpaid work requirement.)
Justice Social Work Statistics show that, for CPOs in general, the time taken from imposition to completion or termination increased over the pandemic years 2020-21 and 2021-22. The longer period taken to complete unpaid work in those years is to be expected, given that the Coronavirus (Scotland) Act 2020 extended time limits for completion of existing unpaid work requirements in CPOs by 12 months, and required any new requirements made to be given at least 12 months to complete. This came into effect on 7 April 2020 and applied to orders imposed before the end of September 2022.
CPOs tend to have more than one requirement. The average number of requirements per CPO in 2024-25 was 1.66, the highest in the last ten years. In 2024-25, there were 11,420 CPOs imposed with an unpaid work requirement. Over half of these had a supervision requirement as well.
Figures 1 and 2 illustrate how unpaid work requirements have continually been progressed by justice social work over the last eight years.
- Figure 1 shows when the CPO as a whole was finished—that is, when all requirements were either completed or terminated, not just the unpaid work requirement.
- Figure 2 focuses specifically on the unpaid work requirement and shows when the unpaid work hours were finished.
Completion percentages are therefore generally lower in Figure 1 than in Figure 2 in the first and second years after imposition. This is because some CPOs include additional requirements, such as supervision, which may continue after the unpaid work requirement has been completed.
Figure 1: The change in finishing rates caused by the pandemic on community payback orders with an unpaid work requirement.
Percentage of unpaid work requirements from year imposed to the year the community payback order finished, Scotland, 2017-18 to 2024-25.
The row headings refer to the year imposed while the column headings refer to the year finished (i.e. completed or terminated).
| Year of impostion | 2017-18 | 2018-19 | 2019-20 | 2020-21 | 2021-22 | 2022-23 | 2023-24 | 2024-25 | Being progressed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-18 | 32% | 52% | 13% | 2% | low | low | low | low | 0% |
| 2018-19 | z | 32% | 53% | 11% | 3% | 1% | low | low | low |
| 2019-20 | z | z | 30% | 36% | 26% | 6% | 1% | low | 1% |
|
2020-21 |
z | z | z | 11% | 56% | 26% | 5% | 1% | 1% |
| 2021-22 | z | z | z | z | 17% | 56% | 21% | 4% | 2% |
| 2022-23 | z | z | z | z | z | 20% | 56% | 18% | 6% |
| 2023-24 | z | z | z | z | z | z | 22% | 53% | 24% |
| 2024-25 | z | z | z | z | z | z | z | 23% | 77% |
Notes:
z = data for a category that does not apply
Calculated as row percentages. Data is rounded.
low = less than 0.5%
Figure 1 shows the rate of progression between the year the CPO is imposed and the year it was completed. For instance, for those CPOs imposed in 2022-23, 20% were finished in the same year (2022-23), 56% in the following year (2023-24), 18% in 2024-25 and 6% are still being progressed.
In Figure 1, there is a marked change in percentages of CPOs imposed and completed in the same year after the first national lockdown in March 2020. This can be seen from 2020-21 onwards, as the percentages drop from over 30% to 11%. This increased to 23% in 2024-25 but this was still lower than pre-pandemic years.
Figure 2 shows the progression of the unpaid work requirement only. It is a subset of Figure 1, and this is why the percentages of ‘being progressed’ are smaller and have higher finishing rates.
Figure 2: The change in finishing rates caused by the pandemic on unpaid work requirements only.
Percentage of unpaid work requirements from year imposed to the year the unpaid work requirement finished, Scotland, 2017-18 to 2024-25
The row headings refer to the year imposed while the column headings refer to the year finished (i.e. completed or terminated).
| Year of impostion | 2017-18 | 2018-19 | 2019-20 | 2020-21 | 2021-22 | 2022-23 | 2023-24 | 2024-25 | Being progressed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-18 | 42% | 49% | 7% | 1% | low | low | low | low | low |
| 2018-19 | z | 43% | 49% | 5% | 2% | 1% | low | low | low |
| 2019-20 | z | z | 41% | 31% | 22% | 5% | 1% | low | 1% |
|
2020-21 |
z | z | z | 15% | 62% | 18% | 3% | 1% | 1% |
| 2021-22 | z | z | z | z | 26% | 58% | 12% | 2% | 2% |
| 2022-23 | z | z | z | z | z | 30% | 56% | 10% | 3% |
| 2023-24 | z | z | z | z | z | z | 32% | 54% | 15% |
| 2024-25 | z | z | z | z | z | z | z | 32% | 68% |
Notes:
z = data for a category that does not apply.
Calculated as row percentages. Data is rounded.
A small number of unknowns are included in the percentage being progressed.
low = less than 0.5%
There was a consistent pattern for unpaid work requirements imposed in pre-pandemic years of 2017-18 to 2018-19. Generally:
- Just over 40% of unpaid work requirements were finished in the same financial year in which they were imposed.
- Just under half finished in the following year.
- The percentage of unpaid work hours finished by the end of the following year after the year of imposition was around 92%.
- Around 5% to 7% finished in the second year after the year of imposition.
Data for 2019-20 is different. As the first national lockdown occurred in the last month of 2019-20 (i.e. March 2020), it had over 40% being finished in the same year as imposition, this is like previous years. If the pattern were to continue, those finishing in the following year should have been almost 50%, but it had reduced to 31% as the pandemic continued. Pre-pandemic over 90% of unpaid work requirements were completed by the following year of imposition. For those imposed in 2019-20 and completed by the end of 2020-21, this rate reduced to 71%.
For the years 2020-21 to 2024-25, the patterns changed:
- Unpaid work requirements which finished in the same financial year in which they were imposed increased to 32% in 2023-24 and 2024-25, doubling since the pandemic year of 2020-21. This is still 11 percentage points lower than pre-pandemic where it ranged from (42% to 43%).
- The percentage of unpaid work hours finished by the end of the following year after the year of imposition was for 2023-24 to 2024-25 was 85%. Post- pandemic this figure has ranged between 84% and 87%.
As of 1 April 2025, 94% of the unpaid work requirements still to be progressed had been imposed in 2023-24 or 2024-25, while only 2% of unpaid work requirements still to be progressed to completion related to the pandemic years 2020-21 and 2021-22.
The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic reduced the rate of progressing unpaid work requirements. There has been an increase since 2020-21, but it is still below pre-pandemic levels. There were 9,823 CPOs with unpaid work requirements being progressed at the start of the financial year 2025-26.
Contact
Justice_Analysts@gov.scot