Fire safety failures: another aspect of the prisons crisis

In a week where all eyes have been on the Prime Minister and his reluctant affirmation of many of the early release measures introduced by his predecessor in the Sentencing Act 2026, another feature of a prison system straining at the seams has been exposed. For the first time, the Crown Premises Fire Safety Inspectorate (CPFSI) – the independent regulator for fire safety in prisons – has published a full list of outstanding fire safety notices against the Government, laying bare the breadth of fire safety breaches across the prison estate in England.  

The list shows that the regulator has sent ‘escalation letters’ (also known as ‘Step-Away notices’) to senior leaders in HMPPS in relation to eight prisons (Bristol, Wetherby, Swaleside, Holme House, Eastwood Park, Manchester, Norwich and Styal), flagging fire safety issues so serious that they would be prosecuted criminally if Crown immunity did not apply to fire safety matters in public prisons.  

There are also ‘in force’ crown enforcement notices for many other prisons across the country, indicating that vital fire safety improvements are needed, including severely overcrowded prisons like Wandsworth, Durham and Chelmsford. Another prison with an extant compliance notice is Highpoint in Suffolk, where a serious fire took place earlier this year, requiring the building to be evacuated and taking some 17 hours and 17 fire appliances to make safe.   

Although much of this information had previously been disclosed to us in response to Freedom of Information requests, the CPFSI has now committed to publishing these notices proactively. This change in approach was one of the recommendations made by the Howard League to the House of Lords Home Affairs and Justice Committee, in response to its inquiry into fire safety in prisons. A further point that we emphasised to the Lords – that the government needs to update its fire safety policy in order to comply fully with the law in terms of its systems on evacuating cells in the event of fire – has also prompted a review of the policy in question by the government. You can read our full submission to the Committee here and you can watch our evidence session here.  

Another positive development in this area includes the recent decision by the government to prioritise the installation of automatic fire detection (AFD) in prisons where possible, rather than completing full fire safety improvement works on a prison-by-prison basis as previously planned. The government has accepted that AFDs are essential and that it must install AFDs in all prison cells in England and Wales, but this change of approach only came about after the threat of legal action by the Howard League in relation to fire safety failures.  

Officials have confirmed that, of the estimated £1.4 billion needed to remedy fire safety failures, only £275 million has been confirmed by the Treasury. 

These are welcome developments, however, we remain deeply concerned about the government’s lamentably slow rate of fire safety improvements. There are still some 19,000 prison places without AFD, more than 20% of those available for use. The government had previously promised to remedy this by 2027, otherwise it would take unsafe prison cells offline, but it finally admitted in January – again only after the threat of litigation – that it would no longer meet this target. Then-Prisons Minister, Lord Timpson, told Parliament of “the need to avoid breaching critical capacity and the collapse of the proper functioning of the prison and wider criminal justice system”. Instead, the government has said only that it is aiming to install AFD in 10,000 of those 19,000 places by the end of 2027. The government has refused to give even a target date for when it might complete the rest of this work. Officials have confirmed that, of the estimated £1.4 billion needed to remedy fire safety failures, only £275 million has been confirmed by the Treasury. 

Moreover, there are understood to be more than 60 prisons that require other fire safety works beyond AFD, such as smoke control systems and fire suppression systems, and the government has offered no timetable whatsoever for the completion of these fire safety improvements, simply saying it will rely on a “guiding principle” to “do the works as quickly as possible taking out as much capacity as the system can safely spare”. The furore over the implementation of the Sentencing Act this week would suggest that “as quickly as possible” is unlikely to be quick at all. For as long as prison overcrowding persists and conditions continue to deteriorate from their extremely poor current baseline, the system’s ability to do remedial fire safety work in a timely and effective manner will be severely constrained.  

The refusal to set a deadline for fire safety works is also a thumb to the nose to the CPFSI, which lacks criminal enforcement powers in relation to public prisons. As we told the Lords, for as long as Crown bodies benefit from Crown immunity, there can be no effective regulation of fire safety in Crown premises. The CPFSI has also expressed frustration publicly about its lack of criminal enforcement powers against Crown bodies. However, Lord Timpson told the Committee that there are no plans to review Crown immunity and the government is “satisfied that there are adequate arrangements in place to hold HMPPS to account regarding fire safety”. We disagree.  

It is inconceivable that, without adequate funding, without meaningful regulatory enforcement, and in a system buckling under capacity pressures, that the government’s “guiding principle” to reach fire safety compliance can be sufficient. It has been more than two decades since the government first acknowledged the fire safety shortcomings that continue to blight our prisons, and there have been no fewer than nine fire-related deaths in public prisons since then. Whilst the chaos of the implementation of the Sentencing Act has understandably drawn attention and ire from across the board, we cannot forget that many of those who remain locked up in prison – and the staff who work there – are being exposed to intolerable fire safety risk.  

Gemma Abbott
Legal Director

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