Fire safety in prisons

Fire safety is a key concern in prisons. The rate of fires in prisons is high: in 2025, there were 2,546 fires in prisons in England and Wales. There have been at least nine deaths in cell fires in publicly-run prisons in England and Wales since 2011 – in Holme House, Chelmsford, Wealstun, Risley, Hewell, Swaleside, Eastwood Park, Stocken and Garth prisons. 

In 2007, the government launched a Fire Safety Improvement programme to ensure that prisons across England and Wales are compliant with fire safety regulations. 

The main cause of fire-related injuries in prison is delays in fire detection. The government has accepted that automatic fire detection (AFD) needs to be installed in all prison cells.   

Other fire safety works, including effective smoke control and water mist suppression systems, also need to be completed in prisons across the estate. The second most serious risk of injury is from inadequate smoke control systems. 

Despite this commitment being made almost 20 years ago, as of April 2026, two-thirds of publicly-run prisons in England and Wales still required fire safety improvement works to be completed to comply with the law.  

What’s happening with the government’s fire safety improvement programme? 

Until 2025, successive governments had committed to bringing the prison estate in England and Wales into compliance with fire safety regulations by 2027, failing which cells that were not fire safe would be taken out of use. However, the government has since admitted that the 2027 deadline will not be met and that cells will not be taken offline even where they do not comply with fire safety standards, because there is insufficient prison capacity to do so.  

The government has recently changed its approach to fire safety improvement works, prioritising the installation of AFD where possible (“AFD-first”). However, there are still some 19,000 prison places without AFD, more than 20% of those available for use. The government has said that it is aiming to install AFD in 10,000 of those 19,000 places by the end of 2027, but has not set any target date for when it might complete the rest of this work. 

Nor is there any deadline set for completing other necessary fire safety improvement works, beyond the government aiming to do this “as quickly as possible taking out as much capacity as the system can safely spare”. 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.  

Officials confirmed to the House of Lords that around 1,800 cells were out of use for fire safety works in June 2026. The government had informed the Howard League in legal correspondence in January 2026 that this was due to increase to 3,200 by December 2026; however, prison capacity available for fire safety improvement works is expected to be under review in light of the narrowing of eligibility for the Sentencing Act early release measures. 

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

Which prisons are affected? 

There has been a lack of publicly available information provided as to affected prisons; however, the government was forced to share its Fire Safety Improvement List (FSIL) with the House of Lords Home Affairs and Justice Committee, as part of their inquiry into fire safety in prisons. A copy of the FSIL was published by the committee and shows the scale and breadth of fire safety issues as of April 2026. Only a third of publicly-run prisons in England and Wales met legal fire safety standards as of that date.  

The independent regulator for fire safety, the Crown Premises Fire Safety Inspectorate (CPFSI), has published a full list of outstanding fire safety notices against the government, which further indicates which prisons are of particular concern from a fire safety perspective. More details of the CPFSI’s role are set out below.  

What is the regulator’s role? 

The CPFSI enforces fire safety legislation in Crown premises in England, including prisons. Non-Crown bodies that fail to comply are subject to statutory enforcement and can be criminally prosecuted. However, while Crown bodies must comply with the provisions of the relevant legislation, they are not subject to statutory enforcement or prosecution. 

The CPFSI published an “Expectations” document in May 2026, which it uses to guide its inspections of prisons. 

The CPFSI can issue a range of informal and formal statutory and non-statutory notices. Since the beginning of August 2026, the CPFSI has committed to publishing a list of these notices online.  

The CPFSI will send a “Crown Enforcement Notice” when it has identified that there has been a significant failure by a Crown body – such as a prison governor, the Ministry of Justice, or HM Prison and Probation Service – to comply with fire safety legislation. The notice outlines the issues, and requests that action is taken to ensure compliance within a specified period. If a Crown Enforcement Notice is not complied with then a ‘Step Away’ notice (also called an “escalation letter”) is issued, advising that the CPFSI would pursue a criminal prosecution if Crown immunity did not apply.  

Nine Step Away notices have been issued since 2024, when the process was introduced, in respect of eight prisons – Bristol, Styal, Manchester, Swaleside, Eastwood Park, Holme House, Norwich and Wetherby (twice). However, it is understood that only three of those prisons have active fire safety works under way – Holme House, Eastwood Park and Wetherby. Step Away notices are ultimately ineffective in terms of securing compliance with fire safety legislation because the CPFSI has no way of enforcing them.   

The CPFSI has expressed frustration publicly about its lack of enforcement powers against Crown bodies. 

The contrast between publicly- and privately-run prisons in England underlines the insufficiency of the regulatory regime as it stands. All privately-run prisons in England have AFD installed; we understand this is the case only after a series of Enforcement Notices were served in respect of several private prisons, which prompted fire safety improvement works to be delivered.  

Prisons in Wales are subject to a separate inspection regime, which has been the subject of a consultation by the Welsh government. We understand that the Welsh government plans an “enhanced independent, comprehensive, inspection model for Wales, under the appointed Chief Fire and Rescue Adviser and Inspector for Wales and with strong links to the other inspectorates across the UK”. It is unclear presently how this would impact the inspection of Crown premises. We can see from the FSIL that all publicly-run prisons in Wales have AFD installed; however, there are other fire safety works that need to take place in Cardiff and Swansea prisons. 

What work is ongoing to reduce cell fires in the first place? 

There is no question that prisons must be brought into compliance with fire safety regulations. At the same time, reducing the number of cell fires would mitigate some of the risk of further death and injury being caused by fires. 

There are works ongoing by the government to address the causes of cell fires, including introducing a ‘Safer Vape Pen’ and the Arc Fault Detection Devices trial.  

However, research commissioned by the government found that “the triggers for fire setting in prison suggest that a preventative approach to fire safety must go beyond physical measures and also address environmental factors. This includes staff−prisoner relationships, encourage the recognition of mental health problems and the need for procedurally just approaches to be consistently applied.”  

What is the Howard League’s involvement in this area? 

The Howard League has spent the last two years investigating fire safety compliance in prisons. We are concerned at the slow rate of progress with fire safety improvements, in particular given continuing problems with prison capacity, and the lack of transparency around these works. We are also worried about the lack of regulatory power held by the CPFSI, which prevents effective enforcement of fire safety breaches in public prisons. 

These concerns led to us sending pre-action correspondence challenging the government’s failure to comply with fire safety regulations at five prisons in England – three closed adult male prisons (Norwich, Swaleside and Wandsworth); one closed adult female prison (Eastwood Park) and one prison holding children (Wetherby) in October 2025. These prisons were chosen because they were publicly run, had outstanding Crown Enforcement Notices and had failings in common, in particular inadequate measures to contain smoke spread, insufficient smoke detection systems, and/or the absence of or ineffective in-cell AFD/warning systems. We remain in legal correspondence with the government on these issues. 

Following the threat of litigation, we have seen several important developments, including: 

• The pivot to an “AFD-first” approach to fire safety improvements. 
• The commencement of fire safety works at HMYOI Wetherby (despite this being ranked only 30 on the FSIL’s priority list when we commenced legal action). 
• The publication of the CPFSI’s new ‘Expectations’ document, with the ensuing commitment of the government to review its policy document on fire safety to ensure that it complies with the legislation. 
• The commitment of the CPFSI to publish a list of enforcement notices against Crown bodies, and the first publication of the list in August 2026. 
• The inquiry by the House of Lords Home Affairs and Justice Committee into fire safety, to which we provided both written evidence and oral evidence, which we expect to report in the autumn of 2026.  

 The Howard League remains concerned that without adequate funding, without meaningful regulatory enforcement, and in a system buckling under capacity pressures, the government’s “guiding principle” to reach fire safety compliance is insufficient to protect those living and working in prisons.