Fair and Sustainable to Blame?

We all know there's a crisis in the prison system and I was struck by the following contribution posted yesterday:- 

Problems in staffing prisons go back many years and include the introduction of a two tier system for pay, terms and conditions known as ‘Fair and Sustainable.’ (FAST). Essentially, you could undergo career progression if you agreed to a new contract of employment which offered lesser terms and conditions. 

The old hands quite rightly refused because of the impact upon pensions and as a consequence, were not allowed to apply for permanent promotion, although many were given ‘temporary,’ or ‘acting,’ positions which they kept for years.

What happened next was that young or inexperienced officers, denied pay progression because of austerity, applied for promotion to grades they wouldn’t normally be qualified for, and in the absence of any competition, they got the job.

The problems on the wings became enormous and over time, the longer serving members of staff left or retired. This is a part explanation for the exodus, but of course, as with probation, the problems are multi-fold and the solutions complex.

The most obvious solution in my mind would be, don’t try to screw your staff and introduce change by negotiation, consultation, and listening. Who knows, the idea might rub off on other areas of the CJS.

Of course the man in charge was hugely optimistic in 2012:- 

Fair and sustainable 

Revision to proposals for working structures in HM Prison Service following the consultation with trade unions

Foreword 

This document sets out a revised set of plans following consultation with our trades unions, staff associations and our broader engagement with staff. Since we launched Fair and sustainable in November 2011, we have met with hundreds of staff and received feedback and questions from hundreds more. This process of consultation and listening has been essential in helping us identify gaps and issues in our plans which we have sought to address where possible. 

The feedback that you and your union representatives have provided collectively has helped us improve our thinking and clarify our plans. As a result we have made a number of amendments that we believe will enhance the ambitions of these plans to be both sustainable for the future and particularly make our plans even fairer for current staff. 

These amendments are set out in the beginning of this document but include: the retention of the non-consolidated payments for Staff Personal Development Record (SPDR) performance for eligible staff remaining on current terms and conditions; an acknowledgement of the impact of the changes to local pay allowances, with the provision of a compensation package on promotion within affected sites; and moving the transition timetable to allow DPSMs to complete their Job Similation Assessment Centre (JSAC) before selection to roles takes place.

I hope that you are now clear that the plans for new terms and conditions set out in Fair and sustainable only relate to pay arrangements – that is salary, hours, pay point progression allowances, and payments. Unless you opt-in to the new terms and conditions set out in this document, Fair and sustainable makes no changes to your current pay. Nor does Fair and sustainable impact on any other parts of terms and conditions such as leave entitlement, sickness or pensions.

In an environment of increased competition and diverse market for the provision of offender services these plans remain absolutely vital for the ongoing competitiveness of HM Prison Service. The future presents a clear challenge for the Service, and these plans represent the Service’s intelligent and necessary response. 

It is this fact that has driven a very productive relationship with all trades unions to deliver their support for these plans which, for the POA, was validated by a ballot of their members who voted overwhelmingly to endorse Fair and sustainable. In introducing these changes we have been clear that our aim is to avoid compulsary redundancies as far as possible. The transitional measures set out in this document which we have agreed with trade unions, mean that we are now in a good position to do that. 

Preparations are now underway to introduce these plans in establishments. New structures will be in place for April 2013, when staff will all be working in their new roles, to new job descriptions which have all been assessed by the new job evaluation system (JES). 

To get there we have a clear and structured process to guide all prisons through the transition as smoothly as possible. However, I do not under-estimate the impact that this will have on all of you, and the Service in general. This is not just about structural change but, much more importantly, about moving to a new, and better, way of working. To do this we will need to manage this change in a way that is fair and decent to our staff and protects the spirit, pride and strong delivery that defines HM Prison Service. I am determined that we will achieve this.

Michael Spurr

Chief Executive Officer

Custody and Community Debate

From time to time contributions come in that seem particularly noteworthy, but are in danger of being 'lost' in amongst a number of matters being discussed. I'm not a user of Linkedin, but I feel the following discussions seem worthy of note and consideration:- 

This may need to be added over a few comments. I came across an interesting discussion on LinkedIn today about the widening divide between custody and community perspectives on probation training, recruitment, and retention. On one side, a custody SPO (and others) argue that prison staff should not only be paid more than community staff to train as probation officers, but also recognised as stronger rehabilitation professionals, even suggesting that Napo should be absorbed into the POA. On the other, a community SPO (and others) respond highlighting the distinct skills, ethos, and culture of probation practice, stressing that the real focus should be on fair pay, retention, and valuing the unique role of probation staff. Then there are those who sit somewhere in between.

My own view? Frankly, I’m not surprised by the custody SPO’s position, it reflects the wider tone of HMPPS towards probation. You can’t justify paying one group more to complete the same training others are paid less for. And the worst thing probation could do right now is move closer to the prison model, when in truth, it should be finding its way back to independence from it, and back towards social work values. I agree that Napo, in its current form, holds little weight to support probation staff, but that says more about its poor leadership and lack of clear identity and silly name, than about the need for a strong, dedicated union.

There’s a reason why probation models and youth justice services that use social workers are thriving. How difficult would it really be to take the £700 million set aside for tagging and AI, and instead invest it into a 20% pay rise across all probation bands, while giving all qualified probation officers and senior probation officers the all expenses paid fast track option to top up their qualifications to align with a Diploma in Social Work? That’s not radical, it’s just common sense. Probation recruitment and retention would go through the roof.Either way, it’s an important debate, and if you’re on LinkedIn (for what it’s worth), you might want to join in too.

The discussion:

Senior Probation Officer - OMiC writes:

From Custody to Community: How Joined-Up Thinking Could Solve the Retention Crisis:

HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) is facing a serious staffing challenge. Recent data shows that around 12% of prison officers left the service in the past year, while around 7% of probation officers also moved on.

The qualification issue: 

Within HMPPS, the early-career routes couldn’t look more different. On the custody side, you’ve got the Unlocked Graduates scheme — a two-year leadership programme aimed at high-calibre graduates, often including a master’s in Applied Custodial Leadership. These officers work directly on the landings, managing behaviour, leading culture change and helping people in custody turn a corner.

Then there’s the Professional Qualification in Probation (PQiP) — the pathway to becoming a fully qualified Probation Officer. It blends academic study with hands-on training in the community, supporting people on licence, managing risk and guiding rehabilitation beyond the prison walls. What I see: As a Senior Probation Officer working in OMiC, I get a rare view into both worlds. And honestly? Every week, hundreds of officers on the landings are already doing informal probation work — supporting resettlement plans, calming parole anxieties, talking about change and future risks.

So why don’t more Prison Officers take the step into probation? I manage 7 incredible Prison Offender Managers. If one wanted to retrain as a Probation Officer, they’d have to take roughly a £12,000 pay cut for two years, and then spend another four slowly climbing back to their current wage. That’s not a transition, that’s a punishment for ambition.

The union tug-of-war: 

Since the unification of the Prison and Probation services, HMPPS has struggled to truly align its policies, recruitment or culture. Part of that comes from the POA and NAPO pulling in different directions — both doing their jobs protecting members’ interests, but often reinforcing the divide instead of bridging it. Rehabilitation needs to be prioritised over politics.

My proposal: unify and empower: Here’s what I believe HMPPS could do:

1. Unify the graduate pathways – merge Unlocked and PQiP into a shared entry route, offering placements across custody and community, without one being seen as “the better” option.

2. Align pay and progression – no more financial penalties for moving between the two arms of the service.

3. Recognise experience – if a Prison Offender Manager has proven themselves over several years, with strong management feedback, let them complete PQiP on their current salary.

Imagine the possibilities: Unified training. Shared pay structure. It’s not radical, it’s logical. The people, the skills and the passion already exist inside HMPPS. We just need to make it easier for them to move, grow and stay. Let’s make “crossing the line” between prison and probation an opportunity, not a career setback.

Senior Probation Officer - Community responds:

Really thoughtful post. It’s pragmatic to look at options, but also to remember that while there are crossovers these can be very different jobs, reflecting the distinct cultures of custody and community even within HMPPS. Probation has always had a rehabilitation and social work ethos, attracting to the training both graduates and those with valuable life or second-career experience, including many from prisons, the military, police, youth justice and the third sector.

If unions secure better pay, that will help attract and retain great staff. But I’d doubt they’d be any merging professional identities, many still see Napo as the distinct professional voice for probation, perhaps increasingly the Probation Institute is too.

I’d also like to see more inclusion of those with Lived Experience in accessing probation training which has long been acknowledged as a thing. [See Prisoners today Professionals tomorrow.] 

And maybe, call me old school, a return to “advise, assist and befriend,” as I wrote here. In concluding I consider what the future could look like too. 

Senior Probation Officer - OMiC responds to Senior Probation Officer - Community:

Completely with you — although I’d also say that, informally, “advise, assist and befriend” has almost become the quiet mantra for many prison officers these days, while the Probation Service has, somewhat ironically, drifted into being seen as the more punitive arm of HMPPS (just think of recall).

I’ll always be a champion for unions (spot the Labour voter). But controversially, I do think NAPO’s influence outweighs its actual size. It feels like a small union that punches well above its weight in terms of narrative and policy sway. I’d be curious to see the numbers, what percentage of the Probation Service are actually NAPO members?

I also don’t agree with NAPO’s stance on dissolving HMPPS. In my view, the Probation Service would be significantly weaker without that structural alignment. The truth is that the average Joe Bloggs doesn’t fully understand what probation does, nor its value to public protection. Without that connection to the prison service, the incentive to prioritise funding, wage increases, or recruitment would likely shrink even further. Dissolving HMPPS might sound empowering in theory, but in practice it risks leaving probation more isolated and under-resourced than ever.

Senior Probation Officer - Community further responds to Senior Probation Officer- OMiC:

I see a lot of good rehabilitation and reintegration work happening in probation offices.It’s fair to say that identity has become a key challenge, not just in England and Wales, but across Europe. It’s also something I wrote about recently, exploring how probation can reclaim and shape its identity. Perhaps Napo shares a similar concern, without a clear and credible identity, distinct from punishment or risk-led narratives, probation risks being misunderstood and constrained by external pressures.

I concluded, and I think this is where we probably agree, that “the future of probation lies in evidence-based reform, practitioner development, and adequate resourcing.” It’s a conversation we should all be part of, and well done for putting your ideas out there. [See Shaping Probations Identity]

Senior Lecturer in Criminal Justice responds to Senior Probation Officer- OMiC:

Managing high risk and very high ROSH in the community takes skill and experience balancing risk, criminogenic needs and building a meaningful rapport take time to learn and implement. There are key skills within this mix that just aren't being taught early enough through traditional qualifications. Qualifications should align to the job role. A very real problem we have is offering criminology qualifications that offer no opportunity to access criminal justice agencies or provide students with a skill set required to make it in criminal justice.There isn't enough happening in our schools to show prison or probabtion jobs as attractive

Well-being Consultant responds to Senior Probation Officer- OMiC:

This is really interesting to read , there's also conversations to be had about why staff are leaving. As an ex senior probation officer myself I've heard of so many staff leaving owing to poor mental health and management. Staffing includes retention.

Financial Investigator responds to Senior Probation Officer- OMiC: 

Why “From Custody to Community” Sounds Great — But Wouldn’t Work (Yet) The idea of merging prison and probation pathways under one unified entry route sounds smart: shared training, smoother transitions, and stronger collaboration. But in practice, it’s not that simple.
Different roles, different skills. Custody work focuses on safety, order, and behaviour management. Probation is about risk assessment, rehabilitation, and community reintegration. Blending them risks diluting both professions. 

Training and accreditation gaps. Unlocked and PQiP have distinct standards and academic structures. Unifying them would require rewriting qualification frameworks and rebuilding university partnerships — a huge reform effort.

Culture and identity. Prison and probation services have very different working cultures and priorities. Without deeper organisational alignment, a joint route could cause confusion rather than cohesion. Pay parity won’t solve retention. Matching salaries helps, but it doesn’t fix core issues like workload, burnout, or lack of support.

Union and structural barriers. POA and NAPO protect different workforces. Blurring boundaries would trigger long negotiations over representation and progression. Food for thought.

Unlocked Graduates Ambassador responds to Senior Probation Officer- OMiC:

This is an interesting take. Sadly the unlocked programme is not likely to be recruiting a cohort for a while because they haven’t come to a procurement agreement with the government. As someone who’s just left the prison service (and an unlocked ambassador), I can say that the opportunity for prison officers to do real rehabilitative work is currently in direct conflict with how prisons are run (think regime, regime, regime) and the prioritization of security. I personally really had to carve out opportunities on my own - which often meant putting in many more hours than the core working day. I’m now looking at joining the probation service myself, so would definitely welcome an approach like the one you suggest - I wonder if it is something that has ever been considered in policy.

Andrew Bridges responds to Senior Probation Officer- OMiC: 

It’s not just the unions who won’t like your idea, Ed. Your point about the disincentives to ‘career progression’ within Probation is not new, but very well made here, and in broad terms I’d support it, based on my views about many PSOs over the years, as well as Prison Officers. There are many interests that would resist such a radical rethink. 

End

Thats it - That’s not radical. It’s just common sense. Agree or disagree, these are the conversations probation needs — not led by academics or think tanks, but by the people doing the work every day, willing to stand up, speak out, and be heard.

*******

1. Unify the graduate pathways – merge Unlocked and PQiP into a shared entry route, offering placements across custody and community, without one being seen as “the better” option.

- No. They’re two different courses for two fundamentally different roles.

2. Align pay and progression – no more financial penalties for moving between the two arms of the service.

- Yes. Probation staff should receive the same pay rises and bonuses already given to those in prisons. Equality works both ways.

3. Recognise experience – if a Prison Offender Manager has proven themselves over several years, with strong management feedback, let them complete PQiP on their current salary.

- No. That would mean prison staff being paid more than probation trainees for the same qualification and role, or even matching the pay of internal probation PSOs on the progression pathway. In fact, with prison pay rises and bonuses, they’d end up earning more. That’s unequal pay, plain and simple.

Imagine the possibilities: Unified training. Shared pay structure.

- Not if it erases the identity and value of the probation service. This is what happens when prison-led management drives the agenda. Next you’ll be arguing locking cell doors compares to probation work!

Final thought:

It’s not radical, it’s ridiculous. And that’s what happens when you use AI to draft a proposal to “unify and empower” a broken service like HMPPS.

*******

Fully agree with you. I think most of our problems have stemmed from being so intertwined with the Prisons (as do most commentators on here I believe) Probation should go back to being seen as an Alternative to custody not an extension of custody as we in all sense are today. Prisons have it relatively easy in the sense they can lock them away, seg them, and chuck them out even if they have no address or referrals to support services. They don't have to worry about SFO's unless they stupidly wrongly release them which with today's technology beggers belief. It's not a comparable job apart from we deal with the same people, but that's like saying a brain surgeon and a chiropodist have a similar role...

********

Shows how disconnected from reality probation managers are once they step through the prisons gate. They have to say all that as they’re line managed by prison governors which makes no sense at all. How Prison Officers are submitting a 26/27 payclaim when probation staff get nothing is beyond me.

Good Job They Don't Run Breweries

Whilst probation remains tied to HMPPS and MoJ control, there's very little hope that resources will be directed towards community sentencing options when it's realised just how serious the prison crisis is. Of course its also well known that the MoJ are not very good at either project management or the contracting out of services. This from the Independent:-

Revealed: The eye-watering cost of letting prisons crumble

The ageing prison estate is in a dire condition after years of neglect, but the cost of outsourcing basic repairs is spiralling out of control, with shower upgrades in one prison set to cost taxpayers £7.8m, Amy-Clare Martin reports 

Taxpayers are footing the bill for “eyewatering” and grossly inflated repair costs at prisons across the country as the government scrambles to keep overcrowded jails running after decades of neglect, The Independent can reveal. Private contracting costs for basic upgrades are “out of control”, the Prison Officers’ Association (POA) has warned, describing the situation as a “public disgrace” that is failing to deliver value for money.

Meanwhile, prison conditions are worse than ever, with a soaring maintenance backlog approaching £2bn, having doubled from 2020 to 2024. Some prisons are so dire that in 2023, a German court refused to extradite a criminal to Britain due to fears over inhumane conditions. A quarter of prisoners in England and Wales are locked in jails which are not fire safe, while hundreds are held in cells without toilets and forced to defecate in buckets and bags if there aren’t enough staff to let them out to use the toilet overnight.

Labour MP Kim Johnson said: “The taxpayer has been paying twice over: first for underinvestment and bad contracts, then for the premium of reactive maintenance and emergency measures.”

It is feared hundreds of millions have been spent on exorbitant private sector contracts dished out by the Ministry of Justice, whose procurement has been slammed as “reactive and expensive” by the public spending watchdog. An investigation by The Independent has uncovered tens of millions worth of spiralling costs for simple repairs and evidence of a sector in chaos, including:

• A project to upgrade 50 showers at HMP Wandsworth, estimated to cost £13m. The MoJ later said the price came out lower than forecast at £7.8m (£6.5m plus VAT), the equivalent of £156,000 per shower
• A new £12m healthcare centre not in use three years after its scheduled opening date due to fire door issues, unfinished cabling and problems with an air conditioning unit
• £196m worth of upgrades at HMP Liverpool, HMP Birmingham and HMP Guys Marsh left in limbo after the building firm collapsed
• Temporary boilers in use for seven years at HMP Lincoln, which the prisons inspector warned cost more than a permanent replacement

It comes as it emerged the MoJ has a two-year backlog of unpublished spending transparency data - worth an estimated £11billion of public money, according to analysts Tussell. The MoJ insists all spending is accounted for in annual accounts.

Steve Gillan, general secretary of the POA, said: “If the general public knew the charges for basic things to be done... it’s eyewatering, and at the end of the day, they are the taxpayers paying for it. It is not value for money, and it’s an absolute disgrace that taxpayers are footing these bills, which are out of control. No one seems to be very transparent about what’s going on.”

The union, which represents 32,000 prison staff, insists the Conservative government’s decision to privatise all prison maintenance in 2015 was an “utter disaster” as prisons descended into further disrepair. Basic prison maintenance contracts were awarded to two firms, although one collapsed three years later, while larger upgrade and infrastructure projects are put out to tender. More than 4,100 cells have been lost to dilapidation since 2010, despite an overcrowding crisis that means every cell is needed.

Offset against the 6,500 new prison places completed by 2024 – way below the government’s target of 20,000 – this means the net number of available cells has only increased by 1,005 places. The cost per place to protect a cell from being lost to disrepair is between £8,600 and £12,700, the prison service estimates, compared to around £220,000 to build a cell at a new prison. HMP Millsike, a 1,500-cell category C prison in East Yorkshire which opened in March, cost an estimated £400m.

The POA has been lobbying Labour to make good on its manifesto commitment to usher in the biggest wave of insourcing in a generation and bring works back in-house, but fears the government is set to continue the private sector model.

“When you report a problem, it can be anything from six weeks to two months until the very basic stuff is fixed,” Mr Gillan said. “When I used to work on the landing at Chelmsford, you used to phone up the works department, take round a little slip and it would be done the same day.”

Squalid cells

When a local pressure group began to investigate conditions inside overcrowded HMP Wandsworth, which was subject to an urgent notification last year after inspectors found prisoners were spending 22 hours a day in squalid cells, they were met with resistance when they raised questions over the sky-high cost of upgrades. They also questioned why a newly constructed £12m healthcare centre at the south London Victorian prison was not in use three years after its scheduled opening date of October 2021.

The Independent Monitoring Board had also demanded answers over its opening date in its last two annual reports and criticised the project as a “major failure of procurement” because it has no residential beds, despite “totally inadequate” provision at the prison.

In response to a freedom of information request, the prison service revealed the delays were caused by fire door issues, cabling and telecommunications issues, and problems with the air conditioning unit in the pharmacy. It said the centre, which cost £12.48m (£10.4m plus VAT), was finally in use in March this year.

£156,000 for one shower

It also emerged that a proposed £13m project to upgrade a shower block will replace just 50 showers and take almost five years. This later came out lower than forecast at £7.8m (£6.5m plus VAT), the MoJ said, which is the equivalent of £156,000 per shower.

When the Wandsworth Prison Improvement Campaign pressed for more information, it was told that the prison services “do not have the capacity to respond to your latest set of questions”. The letter, dated April 2025, from Ian Blakeman, a director at His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) London, concluded: “We do not consider that there is benefit to HMP Wandsworth or the prisoners detained there in continuing this correspondence.”

Tom Wheatley, the chair of the Prison Governors’ Association, said privatisation has been “incredibly frustrating” for governors who are no longer able to commission repairs. “When I was first a prison governor, the maintenance staff were employees in my direct management,” he said. “I felt in control of that stuff.”

Abandoned plans

Now, governors are at the mercy of their MoJ landlords, while private contractors charge a premium for the inconvenience of working in a prison environment. Some have got so fed up that they have started their own initiatives, using prisoners to carry out repairs.

When he was running HMP Wakefield from 2018 to 2024, Mr Wheatley was left staggered after learning that replacing a single shower in a supervision unit would cost more than £40,000.

He explained: “Contractors in that environment need to be security cleared to a really high standard. We then place lots of restrictions around when they can come in and out, and how long it takes for them to come in and out. They have to be supervised all the time, and then there’s periods of the day where we don’t let them work. The contractor then thinks, in order to do this bit of work at the prison, instead of this being a job that’s going to take two blokes two days, it’s now going to take two blokes six days. And during those six days, you are going to have to turn down other work. So that’s why it’s so expensive.”

It also has major implications when private firms go bust. The government was forced to step in and launch a corporate-style Government Facilities Services Limited (GFSL) when the firm tasked with maintaining prisons across southern England, Carillion, failed in 2018.

A £56m scheme to upgrade HMP Liverpool has been left an abandoned building site after contractors ISG collapsed last year. The building firm was one of the government’s biggest contractors for upgrades and prison expansion, leaving many projects in limbo.

Work has only recently resumed with replacement builders at HMP Birmingham, where ISG was refurbishing 300 cells at a cost of £61m, The Independent understands. The full cost to the government of the firm’s collapse is not yet known. It will also delay efforts to bring 23,000 occupied cells that do not meet fire safety standards up to code by the end of 2027, leaving them at risk of enforcement action by the Crown Premises Fire Safety Inspectorate.

Rats and cockroaches

Prisons inspector Charlie Taylor said he regularly sees prisons with costly temporary fixes that are an “enormous” waste of money, while many are held in squalid conditions inside rat- and cockroach-infested jails. “You often see places with temporary buildings, temporary kitchens,” he told The Independent.

“Very often the prison service is spending more money on hiring kit like generator sets or fridges and things like that than it would by just going out and buying the damn things. That’s just astonishing because it’s an enormous waste of money.”

In a recent inspection of HMP Lincoln, he called for urgent investment to replace the temporary heating system, which was “not fit for purpose”. He said “long delays” with getting a new boiler meant the prison had relied for seven years on a temporary solution that had cost far more than getting a replacement.

However, in its response, the government said the boiler would not be upgraded until pipe replacement works to tackle the risk from Legionella bacteria had been completed, which could take until 2028. In 2017, an inmate died after contracting legionnaires’ disease at the prison.

‘Something has gone badly wrong’

Ms Johnson, Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside, is backing the POA’s calls to bring back maintenance in-house. She fears privatisation and neglect have left taxpayers footing the bill for hundreds of millions in avoidable costs.

“It is abundantly clear that the system is not delivering value for money,” she told The Independent. “When basic works like Wandsworth’s £13m shower refurbishment are scheduled to take five years, something has gone badly wrong with scoping, procurement and delivery. It is the exact kind of opaque, delay-ridden contracting that breeds mistrust within the system.”

A report from the National Audit Office (NAO) concluded in January that prison funding had failed to keep pace with policy, which has seen more people jailed for longer, leading to “reactive solutions which represent poor value for money”.

This includes a focus on building new places urgently at increased costs and contingency measures, including hiring police cells at nearly five times the average daily cost of a prison place. HMPPS spent £70m on the emergency measure, known as Operation Safeguard, between February 2023 and September 2024, but cells were only occupied roughly 4 per cent of the time, the report said.

An MoJ spokesperson said: 

“This government inherited a prison system in crisis – with crumbling infrastructure, dangerous prisons and hard-working staff under immense pressure. That is why we are focusing efforts on building 14,000 new prison places – with 2,500 already complete – and have announced a £500m investment into long-term prison and probation maintenance so that we always have the cells we need. A 2023 assessment identified that outsourcing prison maintenance contracts to expert private companies would deliver the best value for the taxpayer.”

Latest From Napo 215

Here we have the latest mailout from Napo today, complete with yet another set of bloody letters - RRMP - from the command and control HMPPS:-

NPS Pay Talks Resume

Welcome news reached us this week during the NPS Joint National Committee, that discussions on Pay are to resume in the near future. Dialogue between HMPPS and the Treasury has taken place to discuss the pay remit and we expect to receive a formal invitation to meet with the NPS Pay and Reward team soon.

The delay in the payment of pay progression due in April and the failure by the employer to properly resource the competency based framework project (see below) has been a considerable source of anger for our members.

What’s been going on?

The pay year in the NPS runs from April to March in line with the financial year. The 2018 pay deal agreed by members, was for two years, 2018/19 and 2019/20 so members received payment for the second year of this in April 2019. READ IN FULL - or read below.

OMiC Update

Our regular meetings with members of the OMiC Board have resumed now that we are working towards recovery and some of the staff who were seconded out of the OMiC project will be returning to it. A final draft of the OMiC recovery EDM will be shared shortly for our final opportunity to consult on it but this week’s meeting was a useful opportunity to raise some of the issues that have really been highlighted by the Covid-19 crisis.

SPO line management arrangements

While the move to formal line management of prison SPOs by the Governor has not yet happened informal management arrangements most certainly are in place and there have been examples of tensions between the NPS approach to exceptional delivery and the prison service approach placing prison SPOs in an almost impossible situation. We have supported manager members to address these issues and in some cases escalated them to ensure that SPOs have the right level of support from their division in implementing the EDM and the NPS guidance on social distancing, hygiene and PPE that underpins the protection of health and safety during the crisis. We have insisted that these issues be taken into consideration as we resume discussions about the line management of the prison SPOs. For now issues should be raised locally via the divisional implementation board and if necessary referred to Katie Lomas.

The approach to recovery

Once the EDM is published each prison will develop a regime recovery management plan (RRMP) and local reps, both Napo and POA must be involved in consultation on this along with the associated Health and Safety risk assessments for the OMU and related activities. As reported earlier in the week Napo and the POA have agreed to work collaboratively on this and where there is no Napo H&S rep in the prison local branch reps will be able to liaise with the POA H&S rep and members working in the establishment.

Napo HQ

--oo00oo--

What’s been going on?

The pay year in the NPS runs from April to March in line with the financial year. The 2018 pay deal agreed by members, was for two years, 2018/19 and 2019/20 so members received payment for the second year of this in April 2019.

The pay deal included the commitment to developing a competency based framework (CBF) for pay progression to use from 2020/21 onwards. Our position has always been that the scheme needed to be agreed in time for it to be in place for a full 12 months before it was used to determine progression. So to determine progression in April 2020 it needed to have been in place by the end of March 2019. When it was clear that this would not happen we secured a further agreement from the employer that progression in April 2020 for the year 2020/21 would be automatic. When it then became clear that the CBF scheme would not be in place by March 2020 we secured a further agreement for automatic progression for 2021/22. These agreements stand.

In March this year, the employer explained to us that because the pay progression due in April 2020 had not been agreed by HM Treasury they would not be able to pay it on time and would have to wait until they were authorised to enter talks with the trades unions on any pay award for 2020/21.

All Government departments have to go through proper process in terms of pay. First they get the 'advice' from HM Treasury which is based on Government directives about public sector pay. This usually comes in the early part of the year. Then the departments submit a proposal to HM Treasury and then they begin negotiations with the Unions. Once we, as a union, get to a point where we have achieved as much as we feel possible by negotiations we put the offer to members in a ballot. If the offer is agreed the pay award is made. This negotiation is a completely separate process to pay progression.

Next steps

This year the process has been delayed because there was a General Election in December 2019 which meant that HM Treasury were later than usual in issuing their advice. We know that the advice has been issued to the employers in the last few weeks so we expect to start negotiations on the pay award very soon. The Trade Unions in any case submitted our pay claim in March 2020 so that the employers were aware of our position. You can see the claim on our website here https://www.napo.org.uk/nps-pay-claim-20202021 which also neatly summarises the position in relation to pay progression. This pay claim was developed in consultation and approved by Napo's Probation Negotiating Committee (PNC) who report to every NEC meeting which means that the reps on PNC and NEC will have been involved in the conversations about it. The pay claim was, as is customary, sent out to members and placed on the website for reference.

We have written to members in mailouts at the end of 2019 and in March and May 2020 to update you on the pay position which essentially is that the progression through pay scales will be automatic for 2020/21 and 2021/22 but that for this year progression will not be paid until the pay award negotiations have been settled. Once we resume pay negotiations we will let members know and will report progress, initially this will be in confidence to the Napo PNC. Once we have negotiated as much of our as possible, the offer will be put to members.

Latest From Napo 193

For quite some time readers have been suggesting that Offender Management in Custody (OMiC) was another disaster in the making and this latest news from Napo would tend to confirm that view:-  

Napo and POA in dispute over OMiC as Johnson announces 10,000 more prison places

Today’s big story on sentencing reform, and the return of the Tories favourite old pre-election mantra of ‘lock em up and throw away the key,’ is symptomatic of the failure by successive Governments to properly understand the need for a balanced approach to prisons and rehabilitation.

I have just returned to HQ from the interview with Sky News earlier today where I tried to introduce a different perspective, and highlight a number of Napo’s campaigning priorities. Depressingly today’s debate has been dominated by the headline of 10,000 new prison places (and at least one new prison) to be financed by another huge windfall from that Magic Money Tree.

Same old, same old

There are a few reasons why the policy shift should be subject to major scrutiny. Firstly, because it represents a brutal ‘pitchforking’ of the reformist shoots previously planted by Messrs Gauke and Stewart on the need to abolish short term prison sentences which would have made a decent start in freeing up space across the HMP estate. Although by now we should know better than to expect a few facts to get in the way of the populist soundbites resurrected by Boris and his chums as they move inexorably towards a November general election.

Secondly, and in fairness to Secretary of State Robert Buckland, who at least acknowledged the need to take a holistic view of penal and rehabilitative policy on the early bulletins, it's yet again been all about Prison being the place where society’s ‘problems’ can be sent and sorted. Anyone with even half an idea about the justice system can tell you that this is a patently absurd mind-set, both from a financial and political standpoint. It's been tried tested and failed more times than many of us can remember and has seen the Prison population rise to bursting point across several decades.

OMiC dispute

Today, and perhaps very well-timed, your National Chair Katie Lomas and I have served notice on Sonia Crozier that Napo are now in dispute over the Offender Management in Custody strategy for a number of reasons as articulated in our letter. Our serious doubts about the practicalities of OMiC were raised a long time ago and have been again in light of the Governments U-turn on Probation, but it’s been an awfully long slog trying to get someone to take our concerns seriously. Today’s announcements should at least ring some more bells in this regard.

Fortunately it's not just us who are somewhat miffed at developments, and last week we met with our colleagues from the POA who also have serious issues in common cause around grading, qualification and workloads. We agreed to exchange notes going forward, maintain contact and seek joint meetings with senior HMPPS leaders and Ministers.

We will also be raising this subject as a matter of urgency at this weeks’ meeting of the NPS JNC and we will report further to members as soon as we can.

Ian Lawrence, General Secretary

--oo00oo--

Sonia Crozier, Chief Probation Officer and Executive Director Women 

HM Prison and Probation Service 

12th August 2019 

Dear Sonia, 

Dispute re OMiC 

During recent engagement with your Officials about OMiC, we have received information that causes such significant concern to our members that we have no option but to formally register a dispute. Our concerns are summarised here. 

Lack of Consultation 

At the last meeting on July 24th we were presented with (after around a year of asking) a Powerpoint presentation titled “OMiC Staffing Model”. The document was dated March 2019. This document includes changes to agreed workload timings and changes to work practices such as completion dates for OASys and the OASys review frequency that we have not been properly consulted about. These constitute a significant change for members as well as establishing a lower level of assessment and review than is currently in place for clients in custody. 

Broken assurances on staffing levels 

At the start of OMiC, we were assured that the Offender Management part of the project would not be rolled out until staffing levels are safe. It is now clear that this is not the case and many members are reporting that their division is pressing ahead despite the significant vacancy levels and unacceptably high workloads that exist. 

We have been informed that, in five prisons, there are serious staffing issues that are not likely to be resolved by the “go live” date. Our understanding was that in such a situation the “go live” would not proceed, but instead we have been informed that the Case Management Support model will be used instead. This will force Probation staff to take on dangerously high caseloads of high risk clients and will see prison staff who have not had the requisite training or acquired the qualification to carry out offender management tasks with those clients. Taking aside the reality that the Case Management Support model rarely affords the workload relief it promises in the custody part of the sentence, there is little work that can be usefully given to someone else in this way. Our members who are being forced to work in this way are at real risk from such excessive workloads and we know from tragic experience that working so far beyond capacity also prevents members from delivering the standard of work required from them. 

SPO workloads 

We have raised our concerns for some time about the prison SPO role after it was announced that the ratio of SPO: reportee would be 1:14 FTE rather than the 1:10 FTE in the community. The SPOs working in prisons will be supervising both probation and prison staff who are on different sets of terms and conditions. We already see SPOs in the community struggling with workloads, especially where there are a number of part time staff (far more likely in a predominantly female workforce) which often means there are far more than 10 staff to supervise. In Prisons, these difficulties will be exacerbated, as the SPO is expected to drive the rehabilitation culture in the OMU while referencing multiple management and support structures for the two sets of staff. Our representations on this issue up to now have been ignored. 

Change to agreement on the contracted out estate 

During the meeting on the 24th July, we were also informed that, contrary to the previous assurance that high-risk clients in the contracted-out estate would have an OM with a Probation Qualification, there was a plan to use the Case Management Support model here too. This again forces members to work with dangerously high caseloads and way beyond their safe capacity thus risking their health and safety as well as making it impossible for them to deliver the standard of work expected. 

Concerns about the model 

You are of course aware that right from the start, Napo have questioned the OMiC model because it builds in working practices that are not supportive of desistance including inconsistency of worker through the sentence. The change of Offender Manager during the preparation for a client’s release is particularly concerning; as the period immediately prior to and just after release are especially vulnerable points in the sentence. The blueprint for the change to Probation Services discusses how problematic these “handoffs” are, and this forms part of the basis for one of the most significant U-turns in policy we have seen in Probation. It is therefore astounding that the OMiC model is being forced through with the same flaws embedded. 

The announcements by the Prime Minister over the weekend of the intention to create 10,000 new Prison places, in itself means that urgent dialogue (and surely a further review) is now necessary on the whole OMiC strategy and the resourcing requirements that are going to be needed in Prisons and Probation. 

In addition, the OMiC model has been altered for the Women’s Estate to remove the Keyworker role for those women described in the documentation as “high complexity women”. We have made representations about the degrading language being used and suggested that “women with complex needs” would be more appropriate. We question the decision to remove the Keyworker role which has been described as providing more consistency. Using consistency of worker as a reasoning for any decision in this model is bizarre, given the representations we have made about the model overall, but in this case it doesn’t fit at all. The Keyworker role is one of the positive aspects of OMiC, providing an additional supportive member of the “team” in the prison. This should be used to enhance, not supplant the interaction with the Offender Manager. Instead of removing the Keyworker role we believe that the Keyworker should remain, but the Offender Manager should be allocated additional time to ensure that positive working relationships can be built. 

No consultation on job losses 

In addition to the practice concerns we have illustrated above, it is very clear that the OMiC model is simply seeking to resolve the acute and chronic staffing issues in the NPS by giving staff unacceptably high workloads and by giving 30% of the custody caseload to Prison staff to manage. Although no NPS staff will lose their employment (because of the high vacancy rate in the NPS and our ‘no redundancy’ agreement) this nevertheless represents a net loss of jobs which has also not been the subject of prior consultation with the unions. 

In view of the urgency of this issue, we are seeking its inclusion as an additional item at this weeks’ meeting of the NPS JNC. Meanwhile, Napo will be taking steps to consult with our sister trade unions and our members about how we should progress this dispute. 

Yours sincerely 

IAN LAWRENCE 

General Secretary

KATIE LOMAS 

National Chair

Rory Gets Out of Jail Free

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Politics is as much about being lucky as anything and Gavin Williamson getting the chop was the perfect opportunity to get Rory Stewart out of a tricky situation at the MoJ. 

Despite him being highly regarded in many quarters, it's certainly the view taken by the POA, together with some sceptical prison reformers. It was also the day after the Joseph McCann story broke with the MoJ admitting he may have been mistakenly released from prison. At the time of writing, although McCann has been apprehended, by any measure the circumstances look shocking and may well prove to be yet another factor in potential candidates for the ministerial vacancy proving difficult to strong-arm. This from the Independent last week:- 

Rory Stewart ‘given get out of jail free card’ on prison pledge, say campaigners

Rory Stewart‘s removal from his role as prisons minister has “given him a get out of jail free card” on his pledge to improve the prison system, justice campaigners have claimed. A cabinet reshuffle sparked by the firing of defence secretary Gavin Williamson over a national security leak saw Theresa May appoint Mr Stewart as secretary for international development – widely seen as a promotion.

As prisons minister, a role he served in from January 2018, he vowed to resign if he failed to reduce the levels of violence and drug use in jails selected for the 10 Prisons Project, a £10m campaign announced in August 2018 to tackle “acute” issues in 10 of the most challenging jails. Criminologists and prison officers said it marked a continuation of the “ministerial merry-go-round” at the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) which was “destabilising” for the sector. Campaigners said Mr Stewart had forged a good relationship with them and made “positive” pledges, but these now risked “disappearing into a black hole”.

A MoJ spokesperson told The Independent that progress on the 10 Prisons Project would continue regardless of who replaced Mr Stewart. But campaigners worried that it would suffer the same fate as the “six reform prisons” project, which Michael Gove set up as justice secretary but was shelved after he was sacked in 2016.

Mark Fairhurst, national chairman of the Prison Officers’ Association (POA), said: 

“Rory Stewart has been given a get out of jail free card.” 

He added: “The pledges [Mr Stewart] made and the way he engaged with us and listened to us were positive, but the question is what happens now? This is the problem. You forge a good working relationship with these ministers, and you start to make progress, because certainly the things he’s implemented are things that we’ve been calling for years. But then all of a sudden, just as you’re moving forward, they get replaced or promoted. So then you’ve got to do the same thing with somebody different, and you can only hope that they have the same engagement with the trade unions, respect what we say and act upon what we say like he’s done. Unfortunately this new prisons minister, whoever he or she may be, will not have time to settle in because this is an emergency – we are still in crisis. Safety is a massive issue. We’re getting staff with their throats slashed and getting their heads stamped on.”

Mr Fairhurst said that while Mr Stewart was making progress, the 10 Prison Project was not on track to succeed, and that his ministerial move would allow him to “get out of jail free” on the pledges. “We all know that it will fail,” he added. “I think people in power knew what was coming and needed to protect him.”

Stirling University criminologist Dr Hannah Graham said: “The ministerial merry-go-round in justice in recent years is destabilising. It hasn’t offered probation, courts and prisons practitioners the consistent stability and support they need. At a time when painfully high numbers of people are dying on probation and in prisons, accountable and morally courageous ministerial leadership is so very needed.”

Peter Dawson, director of the Prison Reform Trust, said there would be a “good deal of regret” at the loss of Mr Stewart, but that it was “safe to assume” that his replacement would not commit to resigning if the 10 Prison Project doesn’t deliver. Indeed, the 10 may well disappear into the same black hole as the ‘six reform prisons’ that Michael Gove set up as justice secretary before moving on,” he added.

--oo00oo--

Writing on Facebook, Napo Vice Chair David Raho offers some observations:-

"This is something that could well impact on future probation either way. He is smart and gets the issues quickly and certainly realised very early on that TR1 was a huge mistake although he has persisted longer than some others of influence in the know with the idea that, despite the growing mountain of evidence questioning this, that there is a substantial role for private probation in delivering probation services than the sort of reduced involvement such as that seen in Wales. My enduring impression of him (gained from a wide variety of sources) has been of a man that at least appears willing to listen and to hear different points of view. He has also been more willing than others to look into, and appear to consider, other realistic possibilities rather than simply ploughing on regardless with the same old same old. Listening is one thing, hearing is another, doing what needs to be done is something a bit more challenging.

Let us not forget that in August 2018 he challenged us to judge him on his record over the next 12 months. This at least shows a bit of gumption. In fact, he said that he would step down if matters in prison had not improved. We should judge him on how things have been going since that offer. I am hoping his successor will come to the right conclusions about TR1 and do the right thing re: TR2.

How did he do?

Perhaps in probation, we will know in a couple of weeks time and either give him a thumbs up for a reasonable effort or a Grayling Award for failure in public office. It’s a key role. Let’s just remind ourselves of what it involves. Specific responsibilities include:

Prison operations, reform and industrial relations
Probation services and reform industrial relations
Sentencing (including out of court disposals)
Public protections (including Parole Board, IPPs and Serious Further Offences)
Foreign National Offenders
Extremism
Electronic Monitoring
Supporting the Secretary of State on departmental finances and transparency

Whoever is appointed has a tough brief in troubled times."

David Raho goes on to say:-

"We live in interesting and chaotic times where it is considered considerable progress and a major concession for the unions to actually be invited to meet in the same room as ministers rather than junior staff. They are still not consistently invited to the higher level meetings where the decisions are made yet - not even Labour did this in recent times.

It is POA action that is feared by government because of public sympathy re: physical risk to PO’s and immediate public safety as they could paralyse the system and force the government into an embarrassing situation where they would be forced to bring the army in. The POA are traditionally far more militant than Napo and their actions are sometimes also used instrumentally by prison governors to achieve their aims to increase resources. The POA have much greater membership density across most of the prison estate than Napo has across probation. They do however concede that they did not resist privatisation enough when it was occurring under New Labour. By way of contrast Napo’s influence is now and historically achieved through rational and persistent argument scratching away at the underbelly of the CJS in recent times utilising modern communication skills to get the message across - sometimes it comes together well and the message gets through to change the narrative slightly. That is what has happened recently with a little help from our friends some of whom operate across the political spectrum.

Potential collective strength, though a noble and honourable aspiration, would only become a reality following a massive and unprecedented increase in union membership followed by the political transformation of staff (the majority of those working in probation are small c conservative) and radical mass epiphanic changes of attitude and motivation across probation from a general position of reluctant acceptance and apathy to solid unified rejection and activism ie unlikely but not impossible.

We will no doubt be able to judge his contribution with greater accuracy shortly. He has certainly made some of the right noises and at present his main contribution is to apparently take into consideration information from others that Graylings team for example did not. This has caused concern to private providers of probation services who believe they have been assured further contracts and for unions and reformers to dare to hope that the government will perform a dramatic u-turn. However, we are wise to be sceptical as actions do very much speak louder than words and until decisive action by government to sort out the mess follows from words then no one can have any faith in what is said.

Faith is a very relative term. I have little faith in politicians to act rationally taking into consideration relevant evidence but I’m prepared to be surprised. ‘Perhaps in probation we will know in a couple of weeks time and either give him a thumbs up for a reasonable effort or a Grayling Award for failure in public office.‘

David Raho

(Published with author's permission)

A Very Sad Saga

Following his recent magnum opus performance in front of the PAC, some might have been surprised by this tweet from BBC's Danny Shaw:-

Congrats to @ButlerTrust award winners. Recipient of a special prize (and standing ovation) was HM Prisons & Probation Chief Michael Spurr who leaves his post this month. 

Regular readers are of course fully aware of the ongoing omnishambles that Mr Spurr has presided over within the probation part of his HMPPS bailiwick, but this lengthy, forensic FT article from several weeks ago confirms that the prison part has been just as much of a disaster:- 

What went wrong at Britain's prison of the future?

HMP Berwyn was meant to be a blueprint for fixing the penal system. Two years on, it is 40 per cent empty

In the hours before the first inmates arrived at Britain’s newest and biggest prison, governor Russ Trent said he was feeling proud. Nick Dann, the project’s deputy, confessed he had butterflies. They sat in the room that would soon be used for family visits: brightly coloured seats were grouped around low tables, overlooked by giant motivational posters. “Big journeys begin with the small steps”, read one. 

It was February 2017 and reporters were being shown around the empty site under a leaden sky. A group of boxy buildings jazzed up with stripes of red, blue, green and yellow, HMP Berwyn could almost be mistaken for a school from the outside, were it not for the bars on the windows and its location on a windswept industrial estate in North Wales. The two men knew that a lot was riding on HMP Berwyn. The rest of the prison system in England and Wales was spiralling into crisis. Prisoner numbers had almost doubled since the 1990s as a result of tougher sentencing, but prison places had not kept pace, leaving the government to stuff about 85,000 people into buildings originally designed to hold about 65,000. It had become common to cram two people into cells designed for one, sometimes in Victorian jails that were beginning to fall apart.

Between 2010 and 2017, the government cut the number of prison officers by a quarter as part of its post-recession austerity drive. The result of the crowded conditions and low staffing was a surge of violence and despair among inmates. Self-harm rates among prisoners had gone up by two-thirds since 2010; serious assault rates had more than doubled. Almost half of adults leaving custody were reoffending within a year of their release. If those were the problems, the government hoped HMP Berwyn would be the blueprint for the solution. The £220m Category C prison (prisons are ranked from A to D, with A the most secure) would hold 2,100 men, making it one of the biggest in Europe. Its size would bring economies of scale, but it wouldn’t just be a vast warehouse in which to store criminals cheaply. 

Trent, a charismatic former Royal Marine, promised a rehabilitative culture that would turn lives around. Prisoners would be referred to as men, cells as rooms, and wings as communities. Men would have phones, laptops (offering internal services, not the internet) and showers in their rooms. The prison would be run by the public sector, but outsourcing company Interserve would manage workshops to prepare inmates for jobs on release, and education provider Novus Cambria would offer a range of courses. Sarah Payne, then head of the prison service in Wales, told an event in 2015 that the goal was for HMP Berwyn to be “the flagship for the rest of the country [and] England to emulate”.

Two years after it opened, mystery surrounds the government’s prison of the future. As inmates continue to be crowded into older, dilapidated prisons, HMP Berwyn remains 40 per cent empty. Without the planned economies of scale, the prison that was forecast to be one of the cheapest Category C jails to run in England and Wales (at £14,000 per year per place) is currently one of the most expensive, at £36,000 per year per place. The Prison Service says HMP Berwyn is going through a “deliberate phased population increase” and running costs will reduce over time, but its own annual business plans show the original schedule was for it to be “fully populated” nine months ago. 

Julian Le Vay, a former finance director of the Prison Service, now retired, told the FT it was normal to build up a new prison population slowly, “but never this slowly”, particularly when “lives are being put at risk” due to overcrowding elsewhere. “There’s something going on there that they’re not being quite open about.” The Ministry of Justice declined to let the FT visit the prison and refused a request to interview any managers or officials. But information from prisoners’ families, prison officers, contractors and lawyers, together with reports and statistics gathered through Freedom of Information requests and MPs’ written questions to ministers, suggest HMP Berwyn remains half empty because key elements of the project have veered off track. 

When the prison opened, some buildings were either unfinished or unusable. The Interserve workshops, which were meant to provide prison jobs for 520 inmates, are delivering a fraction of what was promised, according to data the FT obtained through an FOI request. Assaults on staff and “use of force” incidents by staff against prisoners are higher at HMP Berwyn than other Category C prisons, according to government data. Since the prison opened, 338 ambulances have been sent there, the police have been called 135 times and the fire service 27 times, the FT’s FOIs show.

Injuries reported to the Health and Safety Executive, also obtained through FOIs, include broken bones, excrement flung in prison officers’ faces, and nurses intoxicated after inhaling second-hand fumes from synthetic drugs such as spice, said to turn people into “zombies”. Reports from the prison’s health team show prisoners have been taken off prescription anti-depressants, anti-psychotics and painkillers without their consent, which some inmates say has driven them to self-medicate with illegal drugs. And Trent was suspended last year in mysterious circumstances. In a letter to MPs, one inmate called HMP Berwyn “the Rolls-Royce of prisons with a Ford Cortina engine under the bonnet”. 

It is not unusual for new prisons to have rocky starts: HMP Oakwood, a vast prison that opened seven years ago, began badly but is now running relatively well. And HMP Berwyn is still functioning far better than many of the UK’s jails. But as the government prepares to build more new prisons, it is worth learning the lessons from this project’s early years. It is a story of good intentions undermined by bad decisions and bungled procurement — and a reminder of how hard it is to do something different when the wider system is on its knees.

When HMP Berwyn opened, the Daily Mail newspaper called it “the cushiest jail in Britain”. The Sun plumped for “Pampered Porridge”. But while the tabloids sneered, prison experts praised ideas such as putting phones in cells to help prisoners maintain relationships with their families, which is linked to lower reoffending. They worried, though, that a series of early decisions would undercut the prison’s rehabilitative intent. Only 30 per cent of the cells were designed for one person; the rest were doubles.

Many prisons were already putting two men in a cell out of desperation, but this was a deliberate choice. There will always be some prisoners who prefer to share a cell — they may benefit from company if they are at risk of suicide, for example. But most people struggle without personal space. The decision contravened the recommendation to eliminate enforced cell-sharing by the UK’s official Mubarek Inquiry of 2006, commissioned after a teenager was clubbed to death by his cellmate. “If people consent to it . . . that’s fine,” said Frances Crook of the penal reform charity The Howard League. “But to build a new prison [that] forces people to share cells . . . even the Victorians didn’t do that.” 

Only 30 per cent of the prison’s cells were designed for one person The double cells at HMP Berwyn have narrow beds on each side, a desk with one chair, and a lidless toilet and shower in the corner with a curtain. Le Vay called it “a major retreat from civilised penal policy”, adding that it had probably been a way to save money. A Prison Service spokesman said the double cells were “purpose-built for double occupancy”, that “many” prisoners preferred to share, and that they spent a lot of time out of their cells. 

Experts also questioned the prison’s size and location. “The current government seems committed to building warehouse-style ‘mega-prisons’, despite a multitude of academic evidence and Inspectorate [of Prisons] reports showing that small prisons are more operationally effective,” wrote Yvonne Jewkes, a criminology professor at the University of Bath, in a journal article in 2017. Local politicians had wanted a smaller prison that could hold men from North Wales fairly close to their homes, which research shows is helpful for rehabilitation. “But it very quickly became evident [the MoJ] wanted to do a Titan, Texas-style prison” that would hold many prisoners from England, Marc Jones, a councillor from the town of Wrexham, told the FT. 

The chosen site was an industrial park 3.5 miles outside Wrexham (£4.50 return from the city centre by bus, £8 each way by taxi), which itself was a long journey for many prisoners’ families, particularly the 75 per cent or so from England. For some, these decisions doomed the project from the start. “There is no way that prison can function effectively ever,” said Crook, citing its size, location and double cells. 

Others believed HMP Berwyn could surmount the challenges. After all, it would have new facilities, plenty of activities and a totally different culture. “Everything we know that works well is [at Berwyn],” Trent told the news site Wrexham.com in 2017. He said every inmate could attend work or education, and would be treated with respect. “If you’ve got trust and respect, it reduces the chance of violence between the men and the people who . . . look after them.” But one by one, these promises started to come unstuck. When the prison health team, supplied by a local health board called the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, gained access to the site in early 2017, it discovered the health facilities “had not been designed or built to the specifications and designs submitted by the Health Board”, according to its own annual report. 

Asked for an explanation, a Prison Service spokesman told the FT that construction company Lendlease had met its obligations and the healthcare facility “was designed to the NHS standard”, but that the health team had “identified amendments that could be made to the specification, to go beyond the NHS standard and deliver an even better quality of service”. The health team’s report painted a different picture. It described a “lack of compliance with infection prevention and control standards, unsuitable and insufficient data and electrical configurations and unsuitable design of facilities”, which made treating patients “unsafe” and “required a complete rebuild of some areas”. That led to delays in providing healthcare for months after the prison opened. In January 2018, 98 men had been waiting more than 14 weeks to see a dentist. 

Those weren’t the only problems. The project, built on the site of an old tyre factory, initially came in £45m under budget thanks in part to “value engineering” decisions such as changing the prison’s layout and mitigating asbestos “on site” rather than paying to remove it. A few months after it opened, Roland Karthaus, director of a firm called Matter Architecture, performed tests and surveyed inmates at HMP Berwyn with the MoJ’s permission for a research project. His final report said that while the building was far better than many older prisons, there were too few areas for staff, no proper ventilation in the house blocks (where the cells are) and problematic noise levels. According to Karthaus, the “reverberation time” for sound in the house blocks was 3.5 seconds. “Above a second, speech becomes virtually unintelligible . . . so you have entirely hard surfaces, everyone is shouting all the time and you can’t escape it, it’s your whole life,” he told the FT. 

Maintenance also became a problem. In January 2018, there was a complete failure of the heating and hot water, which took five days to fix. This winter, the heating broke down again. The prison service was “urgently working” with contractors to fix problems with the heating system, a spokesman said. Then there was the centrepiece of the rehabilitative vision: workshops that were meant to keep 520 prisoners busy, imparting useful skills. Interserve’s winning bid to run them listed five subcontractors including a call centre, a small windmill manufacturer and a recycling company. Interserve’s 2017 annual report, published in April 2018, devoted a special box to the project, saying it “provides employment places for 520 men . . . designed to replicate a normal working environment”. But that wasn’t true when the report was published and it’s still not true today. 

The workshop buildings were not ready when the prison opened, according to multiple sources and FOI requests. They lacked basics like electrical work, fixtures and fittings. “The lack of work spaces has probably been the greatest challenge for everyone who lives and works at Berwyn,” Trent wrote in his anniversary message to staff a year after the prison opened. “The procurement process has not yet gone as we would have hoped or planned [and], consequently, there are too many men left on the communities during the day.” 

Today, two full years after the prison opened, the workshop buildings are still not ready. “There were just so many delays, it was ridiculous,” said Mark Gilbert of recycling company Emerald Trading, one of the original subcontractors, who became fed up of waiting and pulled out. Interserve has been running a pared-down set of workshops inside one of the house blocks. In January this year, it was providing 200 places, with about 150 to 160 prisoners attending on average. Interserve told the FT that the box in its annual report “was intended as an explanation of the project and our contractual obligations, and not performance of the contract”. 

No one admits blame for the workshop mess. Lendlease told the FT: “All of our work was successfully completed to specifications requested by the MoJ.” Interserve told the FT it had been asked by the MoJ in October 2017 (eight months after the prison opened) to provide the mechanical and electrical work required to finish the workshops. That final contract was only signed in October 2018 and the work is not due to be finished until April. A prison service spokesman said Lendlease and Interserve “delivered on the specification requested of them”. He added: “The process of deciding who would ‘fit out’ the workshops was carried out once the detailed functionality of the workshops was known, and there were delays during this process, due to the detailed negotiations required.” 

The workshop debacle helps explain why there are still only about 1,300 inmates in a prison designed to hold 2,100. Prison deputy Nick Dann told MPs last year that the population “ramp-up plan” was linked to the number of activity places available. “It is primary for us and our stability that we have activities for the new men as we receive them each week.” Crook put it more succinctly: “The devil makes work for idle hands.” 

At 4.30 one recent afternoon, prisoners’ ­relatives spilled out of HMP Berwyn into the bitterly cold dusk. Most headed for the car park. Sally Smith, a wriggly baby in her arms, flopped on to a chair in the visitor centre. She had been to see her partner, who was transferred to HMP Berwyn almost a year ago. “They sold him the dream,” Smith (not her real name) sighed. “They said it’s a new prison to help people. But it’s terrible.” It’s not easy to gather a fair impression of life inside a prison from outside the gate. 

No official inspection report for the prison has been published yet and prisoners are banned from communicating with journalists without permission from the governor. Interviews with prisoners’ relatives, friends, lawyers and other representatives paint a mixed picture. Some of those transferred from other prisons found it a vast improvement. “People want to come here — it’s like they’re ­winning if they’re here,” said one young woman whose partner had arrived a month ago. He had started studying maths. Another called it “really good”, especially the education facilities. 

‘They said it’s a new prison to help people. But it’s terrible’ HMP Berwyn’s Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) — a panel of citizen volunteers — wrote in a report last July that men were “treated fairly and with decency” and the MoJ “should be applauded” for supporting a “new progressive regime”. Ian Lucas, the Labour MP for Wrexham, told the FT he had been sceptical initially about the prison’s size, but felt the project had been delivered well overall. It was a good physical environment and everyone he met there was focused on rehabilitation, though he added this had been “undermined to some extent” by the failure to open the workshops. 

Others described a consistent set of problems, starting with the prison’s failure to live up to its own promises. HMP Berwyn staff had gone on “roadshows” to recruit prisoners from other jails. “They had a list of courses and things they could be doing, which is what he wants, he wants to better himself,” said the partner of one prisoner, who did not want to be named. “Now he’s there, they’re like, ‘Oh no, we don’t have the facilities for that.’” Her partner is one of 250 inmates at HMP Berwyn who have asked to be transferred to a different prison, according to data obtained through a ministerial written question. Kelly Coombs, who runs Census Group, a call-centre company that employs inmates in many prisons including HMP Berwyn, said that while the prison’s aspirations were “exactly right”, inmates felt they were “promised this entirely transformative experience, and that hasn’t happened”. 

Drugs have also found their way in. By October 2017, it was clear some men had been “abusing the freedoms in visits” to smuggle in drugs, Trent admitted in his anniversary message; the rules were duly tightened. On March 31 last year, a 22-year-old called Luke Jones died in his cell. The preliminary inquest blamed a heart attack probably caused by spice; a full inquest has still not been held. The IMB wrote in July 2018 that illegal drugs were “readily available” in the flagship jail. But it also warned that some prisoners had been driven to “self-medicate” with drugs because of the prison’s practice of taking some inmates off their prescription medications. 

Smith, sitting with her baby in the visitor centre, said this was one of the first signs of trouble for her partner. He was on mirtazapine for anxiety and depression, but when he was transferred to HMP Berwyn, a prison doctor told him: “We don’t like these here.” Smith added: “They said they’d put him on something else but they never did. He’s basically in withdrawal.” 

 A table contained in the health board’s annual pharmacy report for 2017 provides a snapshot of the number of prisoners with prescriptions on arrival, and the number in November 2017. The number of men on a range of different antidepressants such as mirtazapine had been cut between 65 and 78 per cent (depending on the specific drug in question). Anti-psychotics had been cut between 45 and 63 per cent, hypnotics and anxiolytics between 93 and 100 per cent, and most opiates by between 82 and 100 per cent. Only methadone had increased, by 8 per cent. 

Ian Lucas, the local MP, who has visited the pharmacy at HMP Berwyn, called it a “tough love” approach. “Essentially it’s a deliberate policy to not prescribe them the amount of drugs, because apparently they say that some of them come with a Sainsbury’s bag full of . . . prescribed medication,” he said. “You can imagine that one way of coping with being locked up is just being doped up all the time.” 

In his anniversary message to staff, Trent acknowledged “our policy of optimising medication” had proved “very difficult for men to cope with in their early days” but suggested they felt much better “as they come through it”. But the IMB warned in its July report that men were living in the Care and Separation unit, sometimes known as a segregation unit, because they couldn’t cope without medication that, in some cases, they had been using for a long time. “It would appear to the Board there is a downside to a policy which means that, in effect, a percentage of men are subject to a compulsory detox, which inevitably affects behaviour and adds to the supply and demand issues around illicit drugs in the establishment.” 

Pamela Taylor, chair of the forensic faculty for the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said such an approach was “not unusual” but that HMP Berwyn was “much more structured and . . . committed in the way they [are] trying to do it”. She also said many prisoners and non-prisoners accumulated prescriptions over time that might no longer be appropriate: “[So] many of us would say it is good, but I can also understand why it’s not universally liked by the people on the receiving end.” Ideally, she added, such decisions would be made consensually with patients, drugs would be tapered and patients would be reviewed. “The big question is whether they then get, within a reasonable period of time, a further review to check how they’ve been without that medication, and/or an option to go back to the doctor and say, ‘Look, I feel just dreadful.’” 

Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, which provides healthcare in the prison, told the FT its practice was to give prisoners a “medication review” with a GP on arrival, in accordance with a guideline from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. “Within the prison population, medication is often abused by patients and it therefore may not be appropriate for said medication to be prescribed,” a spokeswoman for the health board said. “At HMP Berwyn we have noted large numbers of patients transferred from other prisons have never had medication reviews that meet the standard of Nice guidelines and therefore their ‘normal medication’ is not deemed as safe and effective to continue.” 

She said an alternative was prescribed where appropriate, and that the objective was always to reach agreement with patients, but that “often, patients do not always agree with prescribing decisions, despite the best efforts of clinicians to explain the reasons.” She also said the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales had not upheld any complaints into the health board’s practices.

Broken promises and drug problems have been compounded by the inexperience of HMP Berwyn’s prison officers. This has been a problem across the prison service: many seasoned officers were lost during the deep cuts between 2010 and 2017. The challenge was magnified at HMP Berwyn because it had to be staffed from scratch. Data obtained through an FOI request shows that, in September 2018, about a fifth of HMP Berwyn’s front-line prison officers had less than a year’s experience, and a further 56 per cent only had between one year and two. More than 40 per cent were still in their twenties. The jobs are advertised at less than £23,000 a year and turnover is high. 

Staff said seasoned prisoners exploited their inexperience. “A lot of them take advantage of the good nature of the system [and] a lot of the staff,” explained one HMP Berwyn prison officer who has now left his job. Another said new staff were “not supporting each other, which makes the wings unsafe. The [prisoners] make the rules and the new staff are too worried to challenge them.” 

Families of prisoners, meanwhile, said the officers dealt with prisoners more aggressively than was typical in other prisons. The latest published statistics for January to September 2018 support both sides of this story. Assault rates at HMP Berwyn are slightly above average for similar establishments, but it is assaults on staff that really stand out: the rates are higher than at any other Category C prison in England and Wales, according to the FT’s analysis. One of these attacks happened the day after Luke Jones died. A prisoner, upset about his death, fractured an officer’s cheek and broke his nose with a single punch, then assaulted a second officer. Other prisoners intervened to help the officers. The first was hospitalised for five days; the second told the court he thought he and his colleague were lucky to escape the wing alive. 

Arfon Jones, the Police and Crime Commissioner for North Wales, told the FT the prison had been a drain on resources. “This year, I have made it perfectly clear, I am not putting any extra money into that prison,” he said.  As for staff violence against prisoners, the government has no recent comparable data on “use of force” at different prisons. But last year, official inspectors criticised HMP Humber, a Category C prison with a similar population size to HMP Berwyn, for 206 “use of force” incidents in the previous six months, “more than at . . . other category C training prisons”. 

In the most recent six months for which data is available for HMP Berwyn (July to December 2018), there were 626 such incidents, which are meant to be used only as a last resort. Injury reports filed to the Health and Safety Executive include several where prison officers fractured bones in their hands during “control and restraint” incidents. The partner of the prisoner seeking a transfer said she thought some young staff had “got a bit of power and it’s gone to their heads”. 

Mark Fairhurst, national chair of the POA, the prison officers’ union, told the FT: “Inexperienced staff tend to use force as a first option, whereas experienced staff will use de-escalation techniques. If you don’t have experienced staff . . . then really you need management grip — and by that I mean: why don’t we have managers on residential units who stay there and guide and coach staff and motivate them?” 

“Management grip” was meant to be governor Russ Trent’s style. “He’s very command-and-­control . . . and he likes to get stuff done,” said Crook. At HMP Berwyn, Trent was determined to instil a different culture. When Faith Spear, a former IMB chair at a different prison, visited the prison last summer at Trent’s invitation, he handed her a pack of cards. Each card represented a different “Berwyn practice”, she explained in a blog post. “Day 1: We recognise achievements and celebrate successes #thankyou.” “Day 2: We actively listen to each other and make eye contact #respect.” 

But multiple sources say some staff clashed with Trent’s style, which they felt gave too much power to prisoners and left them unsupported. At most prisons, inmates earn privileges through good behaviour, but at HMP Berwyn they were given privileges on arrival and had them removed for poor behaviour. Fairhurst said: “That really, in my eyes, has been a social experiment that has gone severely wrong . . . You had management in place, many of whom were newly promoted and wanted to embrace this new culture to the detriment of security, control, order and discipline.” 

Trent seemed undaunted by any internal resistance. In July last year he tweeted: “‘It’s impossible’ said Pride. ‘It’s risky,’ said Experience. ‘It’s pointless,’ said Reason. ‘Give it a try,’ whispered Heart.” A month later, he was abruptly suspended from his job after allegations were made about him; the Prison Service did not specify what they were. Trent did not respond to the FT’s attempt to contact him, but the Prison Service said that, following an investigation, “no formal disciplinary action” had been taken. He has now returned to work in the Prison Service (though not at HMP Berwyn). An interim governor was brought in, and a new permanent one will start next month. 

In response to the figures on violence, drugs and staff inexperience, the Prison Service spokesman said the government was spending an extra £70m to fight drugs across all prisons, training more than 4,000 new prison officers, and rolling out “Pava” incapacitant spray to officers. HMP Berwyn has been given new drug-detection equipment, dogs and a specialist search team. It is also using a new “Challenge, Support and Intervention Plan” to help staff “manage violent prisoners” and a key worker scheme to improve prisoner-staff relationships. 

As dusk fell, Smith gathered up her baby and headed to the car park to meet her cousin who had driven her from England. She wouldn’t have to do this journey much longer: her partner was due out fairly soon and she couldn’t wait. But if there was a plan in place to help him get on his feet, she didn’t know about it. 

Most jails in England and Wales don’t have a great record at helping prisoners transition back to normal life. “I left prison with £46 and PTSD,” said Cody Lachey, a former prisoner (not at HMP Berwyn) who now speaks out about prison reform. The public might like the idea of “brutalising prisoners”, Lachey told the FT, but it ultimately costs society when those people are released back into the community: “People are entering broken, and leaving in bits.” 

The team at HMP Berwyn hoped to show there was a better way, but the prison is tied into a wider probation system that is in disarray. In 2013, then justice secretary Chris Grayling began the part-privatisation of the system across England and Wales: a group of mainly private-sector companies took on contracts to manage low-to-medium-risk offenders, while the public sector continued to deal with high-risk ones. 

In a damning report published last week, the National Audit Office concluded the MoJ had “set itself up to fail” with “rushed” reforms that proved “extremely costly for taxpayers” and had seen the number of people on short sentences recalled to prison “skyrocket”. In Wales, the contract was given to Working Links, a company owned by a German private equity firm. Last month, Working Links collapsed into administration. The government has said that the private probation contracts will end early, but the design of the new system is not yet clear. 

Katie Lomas, national chair of Napo, the trade union for probation officers, said HMP Berwyn had a “really positive aim” to focus on rehabilitation. “But if the structure that you are trying to put that inside of doesn’t help, then you’re at war with yourself before you even start.” Liz Saville Roberts, a North Wales MP from the Plaid Cymru party who has obtained data about HMP Berwyn through ministerial questions, agreed. “The regime itself was, and is, very worthwhile,” she said, “if it was given the means with which it could actually succeed.” Crook of the Howard League, meanwhile, argued the answer was not to build more prisons at all but to reduce the prison population. 

The government’s stance appears to be in flux. Last month, David Gauke, the justice secretary, made a case for abolishing custodial sentences of less than six months and managing those criminals in the community instead. He called for “a national debate about what justice, including punishment, should look like”. But plans for big new prisons continue. In December, the MoJ amended its request for planning permission for a new Category C prison in Yorkshire: having “reviewed the level and distribution of strategic need”, it wanted to up the number of prisoners from 1,017 to 1,440. 

Still, there are signs the MoJ has learnt some lessons. The design for a new prison in Wellingborough states that the majority of cells will be singles, not doubles. The Prison Service spokesman noted that closed floors and bar-less sealed windows there would “help reduce noise levels and create an atmosphere conducive to rehabilitation”. He pointed out the IMB for HMP Berwyn had recognised the “considerable achievement” of opening a big and complex prison, and the “excellent work” of staff who ran a regime “with many examples of good and innovative practice”. 

He added: “As with any new prison there have been planning and implementation issues, which we have worked hard to resolve, and we know there will be more to do as we move towards full occupancy. Lessons learnt from Berwyn, along with our extensive consultation of stakeholders and prison design experts, will shape our approach as we develop an estate that can improve rehabilitation and create safe and secure environments for staff and offenders.” 

Inside the prison fence, not everyone is so optimistic. Shortly after Luke Jones died at HMP Berwyn, an older prisoner wrote a letter to Inside Time, the magazine for people in jail. He wanted to tell Jones’s family how sad and upset everyone was. “An internal investigation . . . will now ensue, and then a message to say ‘Lessons have been learnt’ . . . I’m a middle-aged man now and angered by the sadness I feel at this young man losing his life,” he wrote. “No lessons are ever learnt.” 

Sarah O’Connor and Cynthia O’Murchu are investigations correspondents at the FT. Additional reporting by Helen Warrell.