“60-plus prisons await vital fire safety improvements” reports Howard League

The Howard League has stated: “The Ministry of Justice has known for almost 20 years that tens of thousands of people in prison are forced to occupy cells that do not meet lawful fire safety standards. Faced with a capacity crisis so acute that more than half of prisons are overcrowded, the Government has reneged on a commitment to make all cells fire-safe by the end of 2027 or take them out of use. No new deadline has been set.”

The Howard League can reveal that, towards the end of last year, more than 60 prisons were waiting for work to address and improve fire safety. Those prisons included Stocken, Eastwood Park, Swaleside, Risley, Wealstun, Chelmsford and Holme House, all of which have witnessed fatal fires in the last 15 years.

More than 40 prisons were waiting for the installation of in-cell automatic fire detection equipment, which alerts members of staff to fire episodes on an immediate basis. They included the aforementioned Eastwood Park, where Clare Dupree was fatally injured in a fire that occurred back in December 2022.

In mid-March, an Inquest Jury at Avon Coroner’s Court found that there had been “missed opportunities” to prevent Dupree’s death and that a “lack of automatic in-cell fire detection caused a delay” in detecting the fire. More than three years on from the tragedy, automatic fire detection is yet to be installed in Dupree’s former cell.

Freedom of Information request

As stated, Government documents were made available to the Howard League in response to a Freedom of Information request. The lists were alphabetised by the Ministry of Justice, making it “impossible” to tell which prisons require action most urgently.

The Howard League has requested updated lists – including details of how many cells in each prison are affected, when works will start and how long they will last – but the Ministry of Justice “has so far refused to provide them”.

The Howard League has threatened the Government with legal action if it doesn’t remedy the situation. Last October, the charity sent pre-action letters to Eastwood Park, Norwich, Swaleside, Wandsworth and Wetherby prisons. Despite them all having serious fire safety risks, works have yet to start in four of those five prisons, including at Eastwood Park and Swaleside where there were fatal fires in 2019 and 2022.

It was only after the threat of litigation from the Howard League that the Government notified its independent fire safety regulator, namely the Crown Premises Fire Safety Inspectorate, that it no longer intended to take non-compliant cells out of use by the end of 2027.

Chaos in the system

Andrea Coomber KC (Hon), CEO of the Howard League for Penal Reform, stated: “From chronic overcrowding and rising violence to record levels of self-harm and people being released by mistake, chaos in the prison system is rarely out of the headlines. Until now, fire safety has largely remained under the radar, but the long-running detention of tens of thousands of people in fire-risk cells, and the Government’s U-turn on a deadline to solve this issue, amounts to a national scandal.”

Coomber added: “After almost two decades of inaction by the Ministry of Justice, worried families are having to listen to yet more broken promises. We know that at least eleven people have died in cell fires since the Government accepted its responsibility to install automatic fire detection equipment. How many more lives will be lost?”

Under the Freedom of Information Act, the Howard League also submitted requests to the Crown Premises Fire Safety Inspectorate asking for disclosure of all informal, formal and statutory notices served by it in respect of prisons in England and Wales. The Crown Premises Fire Safety Inspectorate provided notices covering a two-year period from November 2023 to October last year.

It emerges that 16 prisons – Belmarsh, Chelmsford, Dovegate, Durham, Eastwood Park, Elmley, Holme House, Leyhill, Lowdham Grange, Maidstone, Norwich, Swaleside, Wakefield, Wandsworth, Wetherby and Wormwood Scrubs – all received Crown Enforcement Notices in the two-year period. A Crown Enforcement Notice is sent when the Crown Premises Fire Safety Inspectorate has identified a significant failure by a Crown body – such as a prison governor, the Ministry of Justice or His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service – to comply with fire safety legislation. Crown Enforcement Notices outline the issues involved and request that action is taken to ensure compliance.

Further, six prisons – Eastwood Park, Holme House, Manchester, Norwich, Swaleside and Wetherby – received ‘Step Away’ notices in the two-year period. A ‘Step Away’ notice is issued by the Crown Premises Fire Safety Inspectorate when there has been non-compliance with a Crown Enforcement Notice and the Crown Premises Fire Safety Inspectorate would pursue a criminal prosecution if Crown immunity did not apply.