Fire Safety In Prisons: Progress or Delay?

 

Finally published is the latest Annual Report of the Crown Premises Fire Safety Inspectorate (CPFSI), which regulates fire safety measures in government buildings including prisons. But it covers not the last financial year but 2021-22, so up to date it isn’t. It’s also not clear how reassuring a picture it provides of fire risk in prisons and the steps being taken to reduce it.

Positively, the report says the data on fires “masks some improvements in fire safety management in the custodial sector which creates a reasonable expectation that fire risk will be driven down if this continues to improve.”

Yet CPFSI also notes that “the rise in injuries is of serious concern therefore even more concerted action is necessary to continue to reduce the numbers of fires.”  

On the face of it, the chart below shows injuries to prisoners and staff have doubled in a year.  

But this is apparently due to the recent inclusion of ‘Precautionary Assessments’ in the data, which cover cases in which no injuries are reported, but a check is made by prison medical staff to confirm this. The breakdown of injuries chart shows that 87% of “injuries” fall into this category. 

CPFSI say that the overwhelming cause of fires in prisons is deliberate ignition. This is driven by a range of factors – "such as status, regime challenge and self-harming".

Beyond the ignition itself, the lack of suitable in cell fire detection has been the biggest cause of injuries, something which the prison service has a major capital programme to address.  

The latest (much timelier) 2022-23 Annual Report by HMPPS noted there were still 26,000 places in need of investment in March this year with a target of meeting fire standards by the end of 2027. An interim solution of placing domestic smoke detectors in or just outside cells has, say CPFSI “proved to be a major managerial challenge for prison staff to prevent tampering and vandalism.”

There are other challenges too – the inadequacy of smoke control systems and fire-fighting equipment; and of course neither the staff nor the prisoners can escape from fire as easily as in other types of buildings. CPFSI have also found that “the smoking ban in prisons has, somewhat surprisingly, negatively altered the nature of fire risk. Whilst opportunistic fire-setting has reduced, we have seen an increase in serious fire injuries linked with substance abuse. The repeating nature of those incidents has raised a fresh challenge for prisons in their duty to safeguard those in custody.”

CPFSI conclude that HMPPS are aware of the problem of the lack of automatic detection at least and “are taking urgent steps to address this problem more quickly.” But are they?

The HMPPS report says that in 2022-23 4,000 cells were upgraded. They’ll need to accelerate this pace of progress considerably if they are to finish by 2027. Troublingly, the HMPPS report also notes how “capacity pressures have restricted our ability to take places out of use for refurbishment and compliance works”.  Moreover, the Custodial Capital Maintenance Programme which pays among other things for fire safety improvement “has undertaken a review of all major maintenance projects across the adult male estate in preparation for potential decisions to halt or defer”.

The Justice Committee should check with HMPPS and with Peter Holland the Chief Inspector of the Crown Premises Fire Safety Inspectorate that fire safety work has not been halted or deferred because of population pressures.