The government has reneged on a pledge to make all prison cells fire-safe or take them out of use by the end of next year, meaning tens of thousands of prisoners in England and Wales will remain at risk.
The Ministry of Justice has admitted it has known for almost two decades that about a quarter of prison places are unsafe, putting the people housed in affected cells at risk.
Successive governments had pledged to remedy the situation by the end of 2027, but that commitment has now been dropped and the government has not set a new date.
Earlier this week, the Guardian reported on the inquest of Clare Dupree, a woman with severe mental illness who died in a fire in her cell at HMP Eastwood.
The inquest jury found there had been “missed opportunities” to prevent Dupree’s death, and that a “lack of automatic in-cell fire detection caused a delay in detecting the fire”.
There have been at least eight other deaths in cell fires in prisons since 2011, and the independent fire safety regulator, the Crown Premises Fire Safety Inspectorate (CPFSI), reports that 44% of prisons in England are awaiting installation of automatic fire detectors (AFDs).
The Howard League, a penal reform charity, has threatened the government with legal action if it does not remedy the situation, saying it “is legally and morally incumbent” on ministers to keep people in prison safe.
It has sent pre-action letters in relation to five prisons across the women’s, men’s and youth estate: Swaleside, Eastwood Park, Norwich, Wetherby and Wandsworth.
In correspondence between the Howard League and the Ministry of Justice on 16 January, the MoJ’s lawyers said it had “been apparent for some time” that prison cells required in-cell AFDs to mitigate fire risk, and that “the lack of such AFD in cells poses a significant fire safety risk that needs to be addressed”.
The lawyers added the MoJ “accepts that there are cells at each of the five prisons that are not currently equipped with in-cell AFD”.
In an letter from His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service to the CPFSI on 19 January, HMPPS said it would “not be possible” for the department to fulfil its previous commitment to “make all cells across the prison estate fully fire-safety compliant by the end of 2027”.
It said: “The department does not intend to set out a new date by which the works needed for compliance will be completed.”
HMPPS cited limited prison capacity for the delay, adding that taking “remaining non-compliant cells out of use” for in-cell AFD installations would “inevitably – and significantly – breach critical capacity, resulting in the collapse of the proper functioning of the prison and wider criminal justice system with attendant intolerable risk to public safety”.
Gemma Abbott, legal director at the Howard League, said: “When the state holds people in custody, it is incumbent on it, legally and morally, to ensure that they are safe.
“Continuing to keep tens of thousands of people in cells that are a fire risk, having known about the problem for almost two decades, is shameful. Failing even to install automatic fire detection in Clare Dupree’s cell, more than three years after the fire that claimed her life, is an insult to her memory.
“The government seems unwilling to come to terms with, or be honest about, the scale of the problem. It was only after the Howard League threatened litigation that the Ministry of Justice admitted its latest position to the regulator.
“Prisons are under enormous pressure, but this is no excuse for inaction. Overcrowding is a problem of politicians’ own making, and projections indicate that the prison population will continue to rise. How can ministers waste billions on building new jails when lives depend on them fixing the prisons we already have?”
An HMPPS spokesperson said: “We take the safety of our prisons extremely seriously, and we are carrying out our plans to meet fire safety standards as fast as possible across the estate.
“In the meantime, we have put measures in place to keep people safe, with every cell either linked to an automatic fire detection system or using a smoke detector.”
