Prison holding serious offenders issued with urgent notification

There were high levels of violence and drug use at the jail, which holds category A prisoners in addition to its role as a category B trainer.

Charlie Taylor, the Chief Inspector of Prisons wrote to the Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor on Wednesday 30 August to issue an Urgent Notification for improvement at HMP Woodhill after an unannounced inspection found the prison was fundamentally unsafe. Mr Taylor published that Urgent Notification today. The details contained in the UN are shocking, to say the least.

Staff at Woodhill were subject to the highest rate of serious assaults in England and Wales and inspectors found bullying and intimidation by prisoners to be commonplace. Low morale meant many staff had voted with their feet: more officers were leaving than joining, with no indication that the situation would improve.

There were high levels of violence and drug use at the jail, which holds category A prisoners in addition to its role as a category B trainer. In a survey of prisoners, 71% said they had felt unsafe and inspectors found at least 26 who were self-isolating in their cells in fear for their safety.

The rate of reported self-harm at Woodhill was the highest in the adult male estate. Despite this, induction for new arrivals was very poor, emergency call bells often went unanswered for long periods, and ‘key work’ support from officers was non-existent.

What is an Urgent Notification?

The Urgent Notification (UN) protocol requires the Justice Secretary to respond in public within 28 days with plans to improve a prison where the Chief Inspector, Charlie Taylor, has significant concerns over the treatment and conditions of prisoners.

Woodhill is a Category B training prison with a young offender institution (YOI) on the same site in Milton Keynes. The prison holds around 800 prisoners in a mixture of single and shared cells.

The inspection report

This is the fifth time HMP Woodhill has been inspected since 2014 and there has been a worrying decline in outcomes across all four of the inspectorate’s healthy prison tests over this nine-year period. Most concerningly, in the three most recent inspections the jail attracted the lowest healthy prison test scores for both safety and purposeful activity. It was especially troubling to find at this most recent visit that none of the recommendations from the previous inspection in 2021 had been achieved. Indeed, many poor outcomes previously identified by the inspectorate had worsened in some important areas, particularly with regard to safety.

Some of the most worrying findings were:

• Inspectors found at least 26 prisoners who were self-isolating in their cells in fear for their safety, and the prison had the highest rate of serious assaults against staff in England and Wales. Reported incidents of violence at the prison had risen sharply, with 298 incidents recorded in the 12 months leading up to this inspection, compared with 182 prior to the previous inspection. Consistent with these findings, the use of force against prisoners was amongst the highest in the adult male estate. Leaders had yet to take effective action to make the prison safer.
• The rate of reported self-harm was the highest in the adult male estate. In the last 12 months, there had been 829 incidents of self-harm involving 124 individuals – a significant increase since the previous inspection. Despite very great complexity and vulnerability amongst the population, the prison’s response to these alarming outcomes was inadequate.
• Illicit drug use was a serious problem. The rate of positive random mandatory tests (38%) was the sixth highest of all prisons.
• Leaders were not tackling the sources of much of the prisoners’ frustration that included a lack of access to basic amenities and delays in getting anything done. Emergency cell call bells often went unanswered for long periods of time, key work was non-existent and induction for new arrivals was very poor. The many relatively inexperienced staff lacked the confidence and were not sufficiently supported to challenge poor behaviour, and inspectors found bullying and intimidation by prisoners to be rife. Many prison officers told us they feared for their safety, and morale was low.
• A chronic shortage of prison officers remained at the crux of the prison’s difficulties; only half of the prison’s quota of Band 3 officers were available for operational duties, and there was still a 36% shortfall even when staffing resources were supplemented by officers on detached duty from other jails. More officers were leaving than joining, and a continuing deterioration in staffing was forecast.
• The physical infrastructure was run down and neglected. Communal areas of the prison were dirty, and in some parts, filthy. Most wing showers lacked privacy, but refurbishment had stalled. The facilities management service struggled to repair often damaged cells.
• Although time out of cell had improved since our last inspection, prisoners still spent far too long locked up. Staff shortages meant work and education were routinely cancelled, and our checks found fewer than 25% of the population were actually attending activities. The library had been shut since 2020. Ofsted inspectors graded the provision as inadequate in each of their assessments.

Conclusion

An urgent notification means that the Justice Secretary, Alex Chalk, has 28 days to respond formally with an action plan to address these concerns.