Health and Safety in Prison : Time for a New Approach?

 

 

 

Given the parlous state of the prisons – evidenced most recently in reports from the Independent Monitoring Boards (IMB) and the National Audit Office (NAO), it seems odd how little interest is taken in them by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

The HSE is the national regulator for workplace health and safety, dedicated, they say, to protecting people and places, and helping everyone lead safer and healthier lives. According to their website the HSE works to ensure people feel safe where they live, where they work and, in their environment. Presumably this includes people in prison- prisoners, staff and visitors. 

The HSE say that they will not intervene “if another regulator has specific responsibility for that area.” But the Prison Inspectorate, IMB's and the Ombudsman are not regulators. Prisons are subject to the enforcement powers of the Crown Premises Fire Safety Inspectorate and the Care Quality Commission, the regulator of health and social care. But there's a gap in the regulation of other aspects of prison environments and processes. 

It's true that the HSE has played a role in investigating the levels of Radon gas in Dartmoor prison, which led to the prisoners and staff being transferred out four months ago.  But this was the culmination of a shambolic sequence of events dating back four years.

The prison’s local IMB has published a troubling timeline in their annual report detailing how fluctuating decisions from the Prison Service and HSE led to “the repeated decanting and recanting of prisoners” after the potentially dangerous substance was first detected in 2020. There is no record of any formal enforcement notice having being served by the HSE at Dartmoor or indeed any other prison.

In fact their register shows only one improvement notice in the prison sector. This relates to the Prison Service’s National Tactical Response Group (NTRG), a group of trained staff deployed to deal with incidents of violence and disorder which cannot be handled locally. 

The HSE notice served in June this year says that the NTRG’s “system of work for Close Control Techniques in Operational (live) Interventions does not reduce the risk of harm so far as reasonably practicable”. 

The Prison Service must comply with the notice by 7^th December 2024. I am not sure what specifically needs attention or what gave rise to the notice. But it may be significant.

NTRG was deployed more than twice a day last year . When the sharply increased figures were announced, the Shadow Justice Secretary said: “These squads are trained to deal with the most serious disorder and violence in the prison estate. The shocking rise in the number of deployments is a damning testament to the failure to manage our prisons and the miserable impact of 14 years of Tory rule on our criminal justice system”.

Now Ms Mahmood is in charge of the system, she will need to ensure that the NTRG has taken any necessary remedial action.

But there is a broader issue. In his relaunch speech, the Prime Minister included regulators in his list of "naysayers" who will no longer have an upper hand, (whatever that means). 

In prisons, they have hardly had a hand at all. They should do more not less.