richard ford

Inspectors found one jail relying on ‘temporary’ boilers for seven years at enormous annual cost, says Charles Taylor in report on living conditions in jails in England and Wales .

“Labyrinthine” procurement processes mean not uncommon for it to take years for work in jails to be completed , report says

Prison infrastructure often in dire state with prison service taking too long to fix problems, chief inspector of jails says in report.

“In our view, some of the difficulties (at Millsike) stemmed from inadequacies in Mitie’s mobilisation team. Either they underestimated the task or were not sufficiently experienced to take it on”, says chair of IMB.

Underlying problems continue at the Millsike prison with many stemming from a chronic shortfall of officers,says chair of IMB . “The site is out in the sticks, which makes both recruiting and holding on to staff difficult”, chair says.

Design faults in other new prisons repeated at Millsike, leaving Mitie who run jail , to solve such problems as blind spots for officers on landings, no gym, no air conditioning in workshops or houseblocks, and inadequate reception space, says IMB report.

Opening of privately run Millsike jail In Yorkshire last year was “chaotic, with basic processes, like drawing keys, locking doors and counting prisoners, not yet established”, says Independent Monitoring Board report.

Housed asylum seekers per 10,000 residents was highest in North East on 25.9, North West 24.7, West Midlands 18.8 compared with 6.2 in South West, , 6.9 in South East and 8.3 in East in year to March 2026, according to Commons library.

Andy Burnham says look at speeding up removal of foreign prisoners as part of solution to jail space crisis, Kemi Badenoch says removing foreign criminals is part of her way to deal with overcrowding. We have heard that from Labour/Tory politicians for most of last 20 years.

No mention in speech by Andy Burnham of Durham coalfield in list of coal mining areas where Labour movement forged. Bit of a surprise given role annual Durham miners gala played in Labour party history.

“Senior figures in organised crime gangs seem to operate with impunity, building up successful prison networks that make enormous amounts of money”, says Chief Inspector’s annual report.

Many jails in England and Wales losing fight against criminality because of failure across government to take the threat seriously, Mr Taylor says in highly critical report.

Worrying failings in security in high security jails in England and Wales including broken CCTV, windows easily breached and inadequate staff training, chief inspector says in final report

Prisoners now able to order weight loss drug Ozempic, Minoxidil for hair loss and anabolic steroids along with cannabis and Spice to be delivered by drones to jails, Charles Taylor, chief inspector of prisons says.

Amber Rudd, ex Home Secretary to lead new review into jails in England and Wales looking at security, safety, decency, spaces and staffing. Begs question why? Ministers could read results of previous reviews, reports of chief inspector and Independent Monitoring Boards and act.

Andy Burnham set to be first PM since Harold Wilson to be born in Northern England and to be an MP from North West

Evidence IMBs present year after year on prisons shows warnings are heard but too rarely acted upon resulting in system that absorbs criticism but fails to correct its course, says Jane Leech , interim national IMB chair.

Without decisive shift away from denial, short-term fixes and rhetorical reassurance, prisons and YOIs will continue to deteriorate, not through sudden collapse, but through the steady normalisation of failure, says annual report of Independent Monitoring Boards.

Romeo told Civil Service World that the National Offender Management Service had a business assurance board designed to “give me the senior responsible officer the assurance this is going to work and isn’t taking any unnecessary risk"

In 2014 Ms Romeo said of the project:“My job as senior responsible officer is to make sure we deliver the benefits of the programme. We need to really understand what’s going on – and there are no prizes for not listening.”