A prisoner in a prison north of England died in a fire after an alarm is thought not to have been raised, according to a new report into the huge pressures facing the prison estate.
The latest review by the Independent Monitoring Boards (IMBs) covers incidents in the prison system across England and Wales in the year 2025.
It highlights the death of a prisoner in a cell at HMP Garth, south-west of Leyland Lancashire as an example of the ‘lack of working fire alarms in parts of some prisons’.
Vermin and vermin issues have also been reported at a number of prisons, including a ‘severe rat infestation’ in Feltham in the west. London borough of Hounslow.
At Bullingdon Prison in Oxfordshirethere were three reports of spider bites between September and November 2025.
The report says these were serious enough that “two prisoners required hospital treatment and one was warned he could lose his leg”.
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IMB national chair Jane Leech writes that the overall prison picture shows “a crumbling fortune and relentless population pressures” in a year “marked by sustained challenges and recurrent unrest”.
In her introduction, she says: ‘Procedures that were supposed to protect some of society’s most vulnerable people have instead often failed them.
“Seriously ill individuals continued to be harmed by prolonged and indefinite detention.
Behind closed doors, force has been used disproportionately.
Andrea Coomber, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said the report “reveals the gulf between the rhetoric we hear in Westminster and the reality we see in overcrowded and under-resourced prisons up and down the country”.
She said the campaign group had been ‘sounding the alarm for many years’ but that governments had been ‘too slow to respond to the warning signs and too eager to add to the punishment inflation which has brought the system to the brink of collapse’.
Individual IMBs are placed in every prison, detention center and immigration removal center in England and Wales to monitor the treatment of those in custody.
A special body with the same name performs the work Northern Irelandwhile the Independent Prison Monitors (IPMs) conduct JOBS in Scotland.
The new IMB report also highlights issues in some of the Young Offenders Institutions in England and Wales, which hold young people aged 15 to 21.
He found that ‘a lot of guys’ were carrying weapons, with particular concern about those made using ‘sharp pieces of metal taken from laptop components’.
At Feltham, 50 guns were found in August alone – despite the facility only housing a population of around 100 boys.
Prisons Minister Lord Timpson said: “We have seen positive improvements across the estate thanks to strong leadership, but we know more needs to be done.
“Whether it’s keeping the public safe by creating 3,000 more prison places, investing over half a billion in vital maintenance and security, or recruiting hundreds more officers, we’re pulling every lever to turn the tide.
“To meet the challenge, our landmark sentencing reforms, together with £4bn for 14,000 new prison places by 2031, will ease the pressure and we are tackling violence and drugs behind bars with over £40m invested in physical security to crack down on smuggling.”
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