Community Payback Orders - Unpaid work or Other Activity Requirements: February 2025

29th April 2025

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.