WPIC Newsletter May 2026

Come to the next WPIC meeting on 27 June

Thanks to everyone who came to our last meeting on 11 April. We were especially pleased to welcome new family members of men in Wandsworth Prison. Their information about conditions inside Wandsworth is really valuable. We have passed on to the Governor the positive feedback we heard about Wandsworth's Safer Custody team.

If you want to find out more about Wandsworth Prison or get more involved in the Wandsworth Prison Improvement Campaign come to our next meeting on Saturday 27 June 2026, 10am-1pm in the Wandsworth Quaker Meeting House, 59 Wandsworth High Street, SW18 2PT. We are delighted that Tim Kerr from the Howard League will be our guest speaker.

Wandsworth Prison Welfare Trust (WPWT) has bought 100 mugs splendidly decorated with a Victorian design of Wandsworth Prison. They will be available at the meeting and one could be yours! They cost £6 so a donation to Wandsworth Prison Welfare Trust in the region of £10 would be kind. Liz will bring a box for cash donations and a card reader to the meeting on 27 June - and lots of mugs!! For more on WPWT, see below.

Fire Safety

Fortunately, serious fires in prison cells are rare. Lots of fires are caused by misuse of vapes and the prison service has therefore introduced new, safer vapes which have reduced fires by almost 50%. When fires do occur smoke can build up, and if a fire breaks out when cells are locked this can be dangerous unless help arrives quickly. That is why Automatic Fire Detection (AFD) in cells is so important. 

HMP Wandsworth appears to be one of the worst prisons in the country for compliance with the requirement to have AFD installed in every cell.  We understand that 1,025 of 1,478 spaces at HMP Wandsworth are without AFD. Until last year HMPPS gave repeated public assurances that all cells across the prison estate would be fitted with AFD by the end of 2027. This was backed by a clear undertaking that any cells not protected by AFD would be taken out of operation.  

In March 2026, following press reports and questions raised by Andy Slaughter, Chair of the Commons Justice Select Committee, the Prisons Minister, Lord Timpson, confirmed that the Ministry of Justice is no longer committed to the target of installing AFD in all cells by the end of 2027 or taking those cells without AFD out of use. Given the high number of cells without AFD in Wandsworth, we wrote to Lord Timpson and raised our concerns with MPs and the press. The Ministry of Justice has replied to our letter to Lord Timpson telling us only that fire safety improvement works started at Wandsworth in January 2025, but with no mention of how much has been done, how much remains to be done and when it will be finished. There have been hints from the new CEO of HMPPS, James McEwen, that HMPPS are now trying to speed up the installation of AFD. But there is still no commitment to a timetable or to take out of use cells without AFD.

The House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee has just announced an inquiry into fire safety in prisons and has specifically invited WPIC to submit evidence which we will do.

Overcrowding in Wandsworth

It is now two years since the Chief Inspector of Prisons issued an Urgent Notification following his inspection of Wandsworth Prison. Despite this, the latest figures from the Howard League reveal that Wandsworth is the third most overcrowded prison in the country. Wandsworth has a prison population of 1396, this is 502 (ie 56%) more than its Certified Normal Accommodation (894) which is His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service’s (HMPPS) own measure of how many prisoners can be held in decent and safe accommodation.

As part of the prison service’s response to the Urgent Notification, they agreed to a permanent reduction of 300 in the number of men held at Wandsworth. The capacity was reduced by 150 with the closure of K wing for refurbishment. Cells on K wing have been out of use for some time, with little visible signs of progress. We have recently heard some rumours that the further promised reduction of 150 in the prison population may be unlikely to happen. We have therefore written to the Director of London Prisons asking for confirmation that there will be a further reduction of 150 in the roll at Wandsworth, that this will be permanent and that it will not result in reduced staff numbers.

What’s it like to have a loved one in Wandsworth Prison?

HMIP report

HM Inspectorate of Prisons has published Safety, well-being and hope, a report on the experience of family members of prisoners,  It highlights the importance of family members in supporting prisoners to behave well and reduce reoffending. Despite this, many prisons fail to support families, making visits difficult and unpleasant, taking too long for family members to find out where prisoners are held and to be able to contact them and not involving families in supporting those at risk of self-harm and suicide.

WPIC survey of families

Although the HMIP report did not include fieldwork at Wandsworth, WPIC conducted our own survey of family members’ experience and sent this to HMIP last year as an input into their report. It is no surprise that our findings were very similar. You can read more about the results of WPIC’s survey last year here. We are currently updating our survey by interviewing families and friends in the visitors’ queue.

Deaths in Wandsworth Prison

There have been four deaths in Wandsworth Prison since the beginning of 2026, three of them occurring within eight days in March.  During 2025 there were no deaths in the prison, although there were two deaths post-release.

There have been 29 deaths connected to Wandsworth since 2019. Putney News wrote an article about this recently as part of their consistently excellent reporting on Wandsworth Prison. You can subscribe free to Putney News to keep up with their coverage of Wandsworth Prison and show them you value their coverage of local concerns beyond bins and buses (not that those aren’t important).

Never get arrested and sent to prison at the weekend

WPIC regularly attends inquests for men who have died in Wandsworth. This is a good way of finding out in detail how the prison operates and how it sometimes fails people. Unfortunately, because of delays in the Coroner’s Court, inquests sometimes take place up to four years after the death, which can be very distressing for bereaved families.

The most recent inquest we attended looked into the death of Waleed Ali who took his own life just four hours after being admitted to Wandsworth Prison in 2022. The inquest showed failure by the prison transport and Wandsworth Prison to read the paperwork which would have told them of Mr Ali’s severe mental health issues and his risk of suicide or even to notice his disturbing behaviour. The inquest also highlighted the inability of health staff to access medical records over the weekend. You can read here the sad story of the shocking failures which resulted in Waleed Ali’s death.

When Mr Ali was in Wandsworth he was given a PIN which would have enabled him to phone his brother who was his main carer and did not know where he was. But he didn’t know his brother’s phone number which was stored on his phone which had been removed and locked away. WPIC has suggested to the Governor that a relative’s number could be recorded on the prison’s NOMIS system when a prisoner is booked in so that this would be available to any officer or member of the healthcare team. The Governor has approved this change.  

Goodbye to the Governor

Andy Davy, the Governor of Wandsworth Prison, who was appointed following 2024’s Urgent Notification, has told his staff that he will be retiring before the end of the year. Wandsworth still has a long way to go, but Andy has made some important changes, not least in seeking to change the culture. He has also been very open with WPIC, especially in inviting us into the prison. We wish him well for the future.

Wandsworth Prison Welfare Trust (WPWT)

Wandsworth Prison Welfare Trust is the charity, set up by WPIC founder Liz Bridge, that helps anyone in the prison who needs a bit of support . WPWT’s achievements since the start of the year include:

• buying clothes, travel oysters, mobile phones and sleeping bags  for the release cupboard, all to be given to men leaving prison without suitable clothing and often homeless.

• buying fiddle toys, rubik’s cubes, stretch toys for the neurodiverse unit

• buying flash cards preprinted and blank, and dictionaries in English and foreign languages for the Shannon trust who are teaching prisoners who can read to teach others reading skills 'toe to toe'.

• providing jigsaws, felt tip pens, wooden assembly toys, playing cards, chess, snakes and ladders (boards and counters) for the Safer Custody team who give support to the depressed and suicidal

• collecting shorts for the gym team who give them out to men who want to exercise but who have nothing but trousers

• making a contribution to a new carpet for the prison mosque - beautiful, colourful, and smelling of carpet

• paying for a month of yoga teachers  when the prison was between contracts.

New projects include providing new toys for the in-prison visits hall where children play when visiting relatives and a plan to buy garden furniture for the PACT house where friends and families wait before visits or recover after visits.Most of this stuff is bought and WPWT is immensely grateful to everyone who has donated money and the many individuals who have collected jigsaws, coats and playing cards. Some donors have been wildly generous. The All England Tennis championships donated vast amounts of unsold clothes and Trinity Hospice sold WPWT the mens clothes that their shops couldn’t take at very discounted rates. If you would like to know what helps, truthfully it is money. WPWT needs to raise in the region of £20,000 a year. If you would like to contribute to WPWT, please visit the WPWT website. Ask if your church or workplace could do something for Prisons Week? Jigsaws, mens coats, and second hand playing cards are also always useful. Do you know a Bridge Club which changes its cards?  

Better together? IMB/HMIP merger

WPIC’s relationship with the Wandsworth Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) has not always been easy. We understand that they were instructed by the national IMB secretariat that engaging with WPIC could compromise their independence.

IMBs carry out a very important role as the eyes and ears of the public inside prisons on a daily basis. The Ministry of Justice is considering a merger of IMBs and Lay Observers with His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP). While this proposal might have some merits, for example the daily observations of IMBs could inform Inspections, we have some concerns and we wrote to Lord Timpson, the Prisons Minister, asking him to:

• maintain the daily visits by IMB volunteers to prisons. To lose these and rely solely on two yearly inspections by HMIP would significantly degrade the vital monitoring function the IMBs carry out.

• ensure IMB members also visit prisons at night, when most things go wrong, as we see time after time at inquests related to Wandsworth.

• accelerate the production of annual IMB reports. Too often these are five or six months in arrears so they become a rear view mirror.

• preserve the IMBs’ function of dealing with prisoner complaints.

• encourage whatever remains of the IMB function to talk to local media and concerned groups. Ill placed concerns about IMB independence have prevented this in the case of Wandsworth.  Engaging with the local community can enhance IMB effectiveness.

The reply we have received from the Ministry of Justice explains that their aim is to put monitoring and inspection “on a more sustainable long term footing, strengthening consistency and scrutiny, and leading to stronger links between monitoring and inspection.” Let’s hope so. We were also told that there will be consultation, but only with the bodies themselves, “experts in the area,” and others impacted by the changes. That won’t be us then, although we were told that our concerns have been passed on to the team working up the proposals.

Healthcare in prisons

The NHS and HMPPS are jointly responsible for ensuring prisoners receive healthcare equivalent to the general population. The Chief Medical Officer Sir Chris Whitty has produced a very detailed report,

The health of people in prison, on probation and in the secure NHS estate in England. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-health-of-people-in-prison-on-probation-and-in-the-secure-nhs-estate-in-england. This is the first report of its kind to assess the health needs of people in prisons, examine the major drivers of poor health such as mental illness, substance misuse, ageing and frailty, and evaluate how well the current services meet those needs. 

It tries to identify system failures and structural barriers such as overcrowding, outdated prisons, fragmented commissioning, data gaps and lack of integration between the MOJ and NHS and local authorities, as well as making recommendations for improving health outcomes.

The report was commissioned in 2023 and completed in November 2025. In WPIC we are keen to see concrete action being taken. Judging by the latest Justice Select Committee hearing, apart from HMPPS conversations with NHS, not a lot is happening.

The report was compiled by NHS practitioners. They used IMB reports and ombudsman findings and made visits to prisons, including Wandsworth. They don’t appear to have made much use of coroners’ prevention of future death reports and the chapter on self harm and suicide is thin apart from recommending ensuring all cells have no ligature points. In particular our concerns about the accurate completion of ACCT records are not picked up.

It’s a very big read but some points of concern are:

• Prison regimes don’t permit delivery of medication in a sensible fashion particularly where dosage needs to be spread over 24 hours.

• There’s a whole chapter on various systems not talking to each other but very little about links between NHS records and prison records and visibility for prison staff of NHS notes.

• A key recommendation is heating control and at several points poor sanitation is seen as contributing to infectious disease risk. 

• There is a clear recommendation that attendance at healthcare be counted as purposeful activity to encourage the provision of space in the regime for that.

• The report notes that lack of physical exercise is a contributory factor to poor health but has no recommendations for monitoring deterioration of fitness after prisoners start a sentence. 

• The uncoordinated systems environment makes it particularly difficult to conduct epidemiology and research. 

• There’s a clear recommendation that first night arrival procedure should be enhanced to concentrate on assessment of elderly prisoners and focus on chronic disease treatment needs. Continuity of care on release is also seen as a priority.

  
  

The mental health chapter is very long on description of issues but short on answers but in particular notes that in the severe cases there are still scandalous delays in getting admission to hospitals. The lack of training of prison officers to deal with mental health issues is commented on 

WPIC will be pressing both the justice select committee and the health select committee for concrete follow-up actions.