18
Examination of witnesses
Andrew Fry, Lee Howell and Justin Ashburn.
Q64 The Chair: Welcome everybody to this fifth oral evidence session of the Justice and Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry into fire safety in prisons. We are delighted to welcome three new witnesses. I am going to ask you whether you could each just introduce yourselves, your title and a broad description of what you do.
Andrew Fry: Good morning. I am the joint chief inspector of the Crown Premises Fire Safety Inspectorate and former chief fire officer. In conjunction with my job partner, who you will hear from in a second, we are responsible for overseeing the work of the inspectorate.
Lee Howell: Good morning, everyone. I am joint chief inspector and also a former chief fire officer.
Justin Ashburn: Good morning. I am the custodial team leader with the Crown Premises Fire Safety Inspectorate. That role entails driving forward the custodial risk-based inspection programme, liaising with our custodial stakeholders, including HMPPS, and also carrying out my own inspection activities.
The Chair: Thank you very much. Could you just explain custodial premises?
Justin Ashburn: That is implicitly prisons, but it also encompasses immigration removal centres outside the scope of HMPPS’s responsibility.
The Chair: Thank you very much. Just before we kick off, can you give us some general background? Obviously, it is slightly odd that we have a job share for this particular post. You have not been in post that long. Can you just give us a brief outline of how it is going, how you see the work changing in the future, what changes you might be thinking of and so on? This is just a rough, very quick summary; we will get into the details in a few minutes.
Andrew Fry: It is fair to say that it has been quite a busy and interesting first few weeks in our role. In terms of our early assessment, it is very clear—and it became clear early on—that we are going to benefit from working with a very committed and professional group of inspectors. Our inspection team are highly expert in the work that they do and they have a clear sense of purpose, so that is a great foundation.
The Chair: Just so we are absolutely clear, within your team of inspectors, do they specialise in types of premises? Are there some who specialise in prisons or is everybody general?
Andrew Fry: Everybody has a base level of inspection expertise, but we do have specialists, including Justin and the people he works with on the prison inspection.
That is a very positive early impression. The other thing that we have noticed during our early work is that there are some important questions surfacing for us. First, how well constructed is our risk-based inspection programme across the roughly 10,000 Crown premises that the fire safety order applies to? Secondly, is the inspection programme appropriately resourced, in terms of both the overall inspection resources that we have available to us and how well targeted they are at our inspection work?
There is a third question about whether we are being as transparent as we could be in the way that we carry out our inspection work. As an extension of that, are we being as effective as possible in holding responsible people to account for fire safety standards in Crown premises?
The final question that we have on our list so far is about assurance. Are we good enough at providing assurance, both to senior Civil Service colleagues and to Ministers, about the effectiveness of fire safety inspection in Crown premises?
At the moment, there are more questions than answers, but I think that is a fair summary of our early impressions.
The Chair: Do I reasonably draw a conclusion from what you have just said, with that range of quite challenging questions you are asking yourself, that you have a degree of cause for concern that the answers will not be quite as good as you might hope?
Andrew Fry: That is very possible. We are three weeks into the job, so we are having lots of discussions with lots of people. These questions have surfaced through those discussions, so they are certainly linked to some concerns that we have heard from other people. Clearly, as the chief inspectors, we are going to need to come to our own conclusions about the answers to those questions over the weeks and months ahead.
Lee Howell: We have already put some arrangements in place to improve transparency that we will talk about through this session, I am sure. The other points will be relevant through the session this morning.
The Chair: Thank you. Let us get into some of that detail.
Q65 Lord Tope: Can you tell us what assessment you have made of the risk in prisons at this stage? I suppose I should say “made or inherited”.
Andrew Fry: Yes, you might well say that. The first thing I will say is something that the committee has heard consistently throughout this inquiry, and that is that the inherent risk from fire in prisons is high.
It is high for two reasons that are linked to the components of risk. First, there is likelihood. In comparison to other building settings where there is sleeping accommodation provided, there are much higher numbers of fires in prisons than in other residential settings. With about 120 prisons and a population of between 80,000 and 90,000 prisoners, the most recent statistics have demonstrated nearly 3,000 fires, which is a much higher prevalence of fire than you would typically find, not least because of the levels of deliberate fire setting in prisons, which are running at about 95% currently. In terms of the chances of a fire starting, they are very high.
The other aspect of risk is the consequence of a fire starting. In a custodial setting where prisoners are unable to self-evacuate, the chances of them coming to harm if a fire starts in their cell are high, unless the fire is detected quickly and there is an efficient response from prison staff to suppress the fire, open the cell and remove the prisoner to a safe place.
Inherently, the risk is high. In general terms, are we where we need to be with fire safety in prisons? No, we are not. You have heard a lot during the course of the inquiry about the major programme of improvement works that HMPPS is rolling out across the prison estate, including both Crown and private prisons.
Lord Tope: Does the assessment differ between public and private prisons?
Andrew Fry: In terms of the inherent risk, no, because the factors that I have just talked you through are present in both public and private. We think that there is a material difference, in that all private prisons now have in-cell automatic fire detection, which is, in our view, probably the single most important thing when it comes to keeping prisoners safe in their cells. All private prisons now have in-cell detection; that is not the case yet across the whole public prison estate. There is a difference in that respect when you look at the small number of private prisons compared to the Crown estate.
Lord Tope: How do you timetable inspections?
Andrew Fry: We timetable inspections by carrying out a process of risk assessment. We look at various factors that contribute to risk. We look at inspection history in prisons, reports that we are having of fires in prisons, and whether there are examples of people being injured or killed in prisons. Also, when we receive building regulations consultations, such as if there is an application made to change the layout of a prison, we are notified of that.
All of that data and intelligence gets put into a management information system that we have. That crunches the numbers and comes up with a prioritised list of Crown premises, including prisons, with the highest-risk prison at the top of the list all the way down to what the system has told us is the lowest risk. That generally drives our inspection programme, although we sample audit prisons that are lower down just to check that the magic that our management information system is working is accurate and we are not missing anything as a result of the inspection work that we are doing.
The Chair: Just for clarity on this, you do your risk assessment; we also know that HMPPS does its own fire risk assessment, and it goes through the BEAST and all of those sorts of things. It has all been described to us. Are you using the same assessment as HMPPS?
Andrew Fry: No, we are not using the same assessment as HMPPS, but it produces the fire safety improvement list through its assessment, and we use that list to inform our risk-based inspection programme in two scenarios in particular.
First of all, if we have conducted our risk assessment process and we have a prison that we consider to be relatively high risk, and that then appears as a low priority for improvement works in the FSIL, that may well trigger an inspection. Alternatively, if we receive notification that fire safety improvement works in a prison have been completed, that is often a trigger for us to go and independently assess the quality of the improvement works to make sure they have addressed the fire safety deficiencies that they were intended to.
The Chair: Given what you have said, it is a sensible way of doing things. You are not exactly the same because the purpose of what HMPPS is doing is slightly different, which is to draw up its priority list; yours is about slightly wider issues. A recommendation from us that there should be greater coherence between the two would not make sense; is that right?
Andrew Fry: That is probably right, in that, in compiling its FSIL, it looks across the whole estate to inform its improvement programme. The fire safety order requires that we look on an individual, prison-by-prison basis or a premises-by-premises basis. Our work is more guided by guidance issued by the National Fire Chiefs Council, for example, than it would be by guidance from HMPPS.
Lord Tope: How many inspections are you timetabling to do in the coming 12 months?
Andrew Fry: In the coming year, at the moment we are proposing to carry out eight full inspections of prisons, and probably about twice as many follow-up inspections to check on whether improvements we previously identified are being addressed.
Our capacity is slightly inhibited at the moment because we have recently recruited two new inspectors who are going through a training programme. In a team of 11, two new ones is quite a large proportion.
Typically, we would look to carry out an inspection of the whole prison estate in a cycle of seven years. Eight is less than we would normally do, and we are hoping that our capacity will increase as those new trainees come online and start helping with prison inspections. It is about eight inspections this year.
Q66 Baroness Buscombe: Is there not a marked difference between private and public in the sense that, for public, you are immune from Crown prosecution?
Andrew Fry: Yes.
Baroness Buscombe: That is quite a big difference, is it not, in terms of deterrent?
Andrew Fry: It is certainly a material difference, in that, from an accountability point of view, responsible persons in private prisons can be held to account through the courts, and that is not a route that is available to us with Crown premises.
One of the questions that we have is about whether we are being as good as we can be at holding responsible persons to account, in both private and public prisons. We have and use other processes to try to ensure accountability without having recourse to prosecution, but whether we can go further in that respect is something that we are looking at.
One of the early steps that we have taken, for example, is a decision to proactively publish enforcement notices that are issued to Crown prisons and step-away letters, which we will issue in the event that an enforcement notice is not complied with. In the interests of openness and transparency, we think that is a good thing to do in itself. We also think that, by proactively publishing those details, it might increase the pressure on those who are accountable for responding to the contents of the notices.
Baroness Buscombe: Do you think the prisoners know that they are not accountable to criminal prosecution in a public prison?[1]
Andrew Fry: That is absolutely clear, not least because we tell them that when we take enforcement action. In the most extreme cases where enforcement notices are not complied with, we explain to them that, were we able to in the circumstances that we found, we would be prosecuting, but we are unable to do that. They are absolutely aware that that is the case.
Baroness Buscombe: Let us talk about the right balance between prevention, detection and suppression. I suppose I am preferring prevention given that, if I may say, you are such a small outfit in terms of dealing with huge numbers of suppliers and the huge cost that this implies.
Lee Howell: Prevention, detection and suppression need to operate as an integrated system. Obviously, prevention is the first step in that hierarchy of reducing risk. HMPPS has been very effective with the safer vape project that you are aware of. Some of the statistics that we have seen have shown that that is very effective in reducing misuse of vapes as an ignition source. Also, in the year to date, some of the figures that we have had through recently would indicate that fires in cells are down by approximately 30%.
We think that there is positive impact coming from some of the prevention and reduction work that HMPPS has done. We are very keen to give it credit for that, because that is a very effective way of keeping prisoners and staff safe.
The Chair: I am just going to interrupt, because we have been provided with figures by HMPPS that suggest that, in the current year of 2026 up until 31 May, so less than half a year, there have been 36 vape fires, whereas in the whole of 2025 there were 2,034. That is significantly greater than the one-third drop that you are suggesting.
Lee Howell: Thank you for the opportunity to clarify. The number of vapes as the ignition source has fallen from about 78% down to about 1.6%. That is a significant reduction in the misuse of vapes as the ignition source. We have then looked at the consequence of that in terms of the number of fires in cells, and that is approximately a 30% reduction. I can easily provide the figures. Just for reassurance, the figures that we use are from HMPPS. We use the same data.
Baroness Buscombe: Do you think we should ban vapes?
Lee Howell: The issue for us is about making sure that the environment is as safe as possible for prisoners. Obviously, staff have to deal with the consequences. The issue for us is about how HMPPS is managing the risk. A vape is one of the contributing factors for that, but it is for HMPPS to determine how it manages that risk. We then look at the sufficiency and acceptability on that. It is not for us to determine that.
Baroness Buscombe: In other words, you cannot answer that.
Lee Howell: Yes. Our approach is about ensuring that government departments and government agencies comply with the law. That is what our focus is.
Baroness Buscombe: Shall we just touch on detection and suppression? We have had quite a lot of detail from prison governors and others about this, but it would be great to hear your perspective.
Lee Howell: We fully support the current focus on installing automatic fire detection. Understanding the system through which fires are dealt with in a prison context is vitally important. Just to explain that, the earlier the notification that there is a fire, the earlier those mitigation arrangements can be put in place so you have a safe system of work that can be applied by prison staff to rescue the person in that fire situation and reduce that further fire spread. The early indication is absolutely essential; that is why we have been pushing HMPPS quite hard on automatic fire detection, and we will continue to do so.
Baroness Buscombe: Is there anything on suppression that any of you would like to touch on?
Lee Howell: Again, suppression is obviously useful to mitigate that fire spread. There are portable misting systems. I know you have had evidence presented before about different types of mitigation in terms of fire suppression. There are portable systems that are used at the moment as part of the way in which the Prison Service will deal with fires in cells.
Suppression is absolutely key because, once you have not been able to prevent a fire, you have then identified that there is a fire and you have early notification through automatic fire detection, you then put in place training, which I am sure we will touch upon through this session. Then you need to put the fire out and deal with the toxic products of combustion as well.
All of those things come together as a system. We look at the system and how that risk assessment is being controlled. That will vary from site to site.
Justin Ashburn: The critical aspect of the suppression is that timely intervention with it. If it is a delayed intervention, the tenability in the cell for the occupant is therefore reduced, and survivability is reduced consequently.
Q67 The Chair: Having come in very recently, looked around the prison system, looked at all the statistics, noted that there are 40-odd prisons with no form of suppression whatsoever and that there are 24 or 25 prisons with no AFD, what is your overall view, in one or two words only, of fire safety in prisons?
Lee Howell: I am happy to start, and colleagues will have a view on this. Fundamentally, there is an issue. The reason why you are holding this inquiry is that you recognise that issue. We are concerned with the current arrangement within the prison estate. That is a matter of record. We continue to issue Crown enforcement notices. We continue to escalate that where those issues are not addressed in a timely manner.
From an inspectorate perspective, there are concerns. We share those concerns. That is a matter of public record. We have an enforcement role, but we also have an advisory role, and we are happy to work with HMPPS. Indeed, we have set up a series of meetings to do that, to try to help HMPPS address what is a very complex problem.
The Chair: I am not trying to put words into your mouth, but when we started looking at this issue, and we started seeing some of the statistics, the lack of funding that has gone in over many years and all of those sorts of things, none of us came to the conclusion that there are concerns. We felt rather more strongly about what we found.
Andrew Fry: Bearing in mind the commitment to improve fire safety across the prison estate was made some 20 years ago, we are a long way down the road and we are still not where we need to be, as I said earlier on.
Our experience is that there has been an acceleration in progress. Work has been done in HMPPS to speed things up by focusing on the most important factors that affect fire safety, in particular the pivot towards installing in-cell AFD, which we know is so fundamentally important for keeping prisoners safe. We think that that is a very positive move, but we are still a long way from where we need to be. That is why, in proportional terms, we issue enforcement notices far more frequently to prisons than we do to other kinds of premises in the Crown Estate.
The Chair: Thank you. That is very generous. I am beginning to wonder whether you are the politician and I am not. Well done.
Q68 Lord Bach: I am very conscious that two of you have been in post for only three weeks. The issue that I want to raise is one that has already been mentioned, and that is about safety training, including both fire safety training and equipment. Have you yet been able to form a view as to whether prison staff have the right fire safety training and equipment?
There is a secondary question that follows on from that. Are staff actually accessing the training that they need? I would understand if you said, “We are not yet sure about that”, but we have had some evidence that suggests that the safety training may not be as good as it should be, given the circumstances.
Lee Howell: I share those concerns. We share those concerns in terms of training. I have looked at some of the enforcement notices issued in the last five years. We have issued six Crown enforcement notices in the last five years that are related in some way, shape or form to training. We have escalated one of those. It was issued in 2022; it was escalated in 2024, and we have not yet been able to close that off. There are concerns. We still have some concerns, and we continue to push for reassurance that that training is where it needs to be.
However, for balance, out of those enforcement notices, all but one have been discharged. There is only one issue now that is still outstanding, and that is in the process of being discharged as we speak. In fact, there is a pilot that concludes this month. Subject to the outcome of that pilot, I expect HMPPS to confirm that the concerns that we raised some time ago have now been addressed by the arrangements it has put in place. HMPPS mentioned the virtual reality training on the use of fire extinguishers in its evidence session.
The reason why we continue to focus on training—and our future inspection programme will make sure that we have at least as much focus on training as we have in the past—is that that safe system of work and that prison environment, as the committee knows, is challenging. It is dangerous and, therefore, your safe system of work and your response has to be effective. That requires every person who could be called upon to deliver that training and mitigation to be effective in the role that they do.
We have had concerns in the past. We have one concern at the moment, but it is an area that we will fundamentally keep at the top of our agenda for all the reasons that you have outlined.
Lord Bach: I am sure that by now you will already know well the Fire Safety in Prison Establishments policy document. All staff, whether directly or indirectly employed, have to be provided with adequate fire safety induction, information, instruction and training, and it should be repeated annually. There are other considerations that are set out too.
We heard this evidence in a previous inquiry into prisons: “Only 25% of Band 3-5 staff say they receive regular training that is relevant to their role. We do not think that the number of officers who feel unsafe and the lack of relevant and regular training is unrelated”. There clearly has been a problem in the past. What is your comment on that quote and something that we found rather worrying in that last report?
Lee Howell: We share those concerns. The Prison Service note is very clear in terms of what the expectation is, but our expectations document, which I know the committee has discussed, goes into a lot more detail of the behaviours and outcomes that that training needs to deliver. It needs to be effective. It is not just about the input. It is not about the acquisition on its own; it is about the application of that training.
When inspectors undertake a visit, they not only look at the record of training, whether it has been complied with and whether there is evidence that confirms that the requirement is being complied with; they will also test that as they walk around with prison staff. They will give them scenarios and test that by saying, “In this event, what would you do?” They are triangulating that training expectation with what we are interested in— “Do you know what you’re doing when you need to do what you need to do?” We bring together those two things together, both on-site during the inspection and through the risk-based approach that we adopt.
The Chair: Let us turn to that expectations document.
Q69 Baroness Berridge: Thank you, Chair. First of all, though, I would like to deal with the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. Is it fit for purpose or does it need updating?
Andrew Fry: Our position with the order is that, in general terms, it is fit for purpose. We think that having a risk-based approach that places responsibility for the management of fire safety standards on the people who are responsible for managing the building generally is the right approach.
If there is a gap, we do not think it is in the order; we think it is in the guidance that is available for the way that the order is applied in prison settings. In fact, the gap that exists is the very reason that CPFSI has published its expectations document. It is about closing that gap so that there is guidance available specifically tailored to the particular circumstances of the prison. There is not an issue with the order; the guidance could be better, but we think we have done a good job of plugging that gap.
Baroness Berridge: Dealing with the expectations documents and the guidance, you recently said, though, in the guidance that you do not think some of the PSI that specifically relates to managing cell fires complies with the fire safety order. It is specifically in relation to the safety of prisoners rather than the safety of staff. Are you wanting to see action on that, and what is the timescale for that?
Andrew Fry: That is absolutely right. When we reviewed and revised our expectations document—it is the second version that has recently been published—we did that work in regular consultation with the national fire safety advisers in HMPPS. No concerns were raised about what we ultimately published in our document.
You are absolutely right that, in our document, we highlight a difference between the safe system of work that is in the PSI document and the focus on that system of work being safe for the prison officers who are responding to the fire. In our view, that overlooks the point that, when a fire starts in a prison cell, by far the most vulnerable person in that scenario is the prisoner. Therefore, the system of work should be built around the safety of the prisoner, ensuring that staff are kept safe in the way that they respond, of course. We think that the balance is wrong there, and that is why we highlighted that issue specifically.
On the PSI document, my view would be that, if we have published new expectations, HMPPS should review its own guidance to check that there is good alignment between the two documents. There is that specific point, as you have identified, that needs to be addressed in the HMPPS guidance.
Baroness Berridge: Have you had any indication from HMPPS about the timescale? Is HMPPS going to amend that PSI, and what timescale does it have for that?
Andrew Fry: I am not aware that we have had that, but we can certainly look into it and drop you a note after the session.
Q70 Baroness Hughes of Stretford: You say that you think that the order itself is fit for purpose but the gap is in the guidance as to the way that should be implemented in prison. When you talk about “guidance”, are you talking about the Prison Service instruction document as it relates to fire policy, or is it something else?
Andrew Fry: It is that and many other documents, including British Standards.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford: There are many other documents, so it is not all in one place.
Andrew Fry: It is absolutely not. There is a suite of documents that provide options for how the requirements of the order are met, and it is down to the responsible persons to decide the approach that they use to meet the requirements of the order. Our position is that prisons are unique in terms of the nature of risk, and therefore you need very carefully tailored guidance that you can apply to meet the requirements of the order.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford: Would you prefer to see a different way of issuing guidance to prisons on this particular issue? It could be corralled in one place so that there is absolute clarity for the responsible person on the site in the prison as to how they should be interpreting the order. What do you make of a system in which that person has to cull, from here, there and everywhere, a view as to how they will respond?
Andrew Fry: Instinctively, that sounds like a very attractive idea, but, being quite old, I reflect on a previous regime that was much more prescriptive in terms of fire safety standards and what people must do. One of the weaknesses in that regime was that it did not allow flexibility at a local level.
The idea of generic guidance that is focused on prisons is a good one, but there has to be flexibility so that what actually happens in individual prisons is tailored to the particular and unique circumstances of those premises.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford: Finally, which part of this whole suite of guidance—is it the Prison Service instruction document or something else—would you like to see amended to include a focus on the priority for prisoners?
Andrew Fry: We are in no doubt that the guidance that others have written and our expectations document place the safety of prisoners front and centre when a cell fire happens. We think the PSI document should be amended to reflect that.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford: The PSI document should be amended. Thank you very much.
Q71 The Chair: Just talking about amending PSI documents, can I read a section to you? “To ensure that staff are fully aware of the procedures they must follow in the case of a fire or other emergency, annual fire evacuation drills must be carried out for all occupied buildings. The effectiveness of the procedures for evacuation should be evaluated and significant issues addressed”. Do you believe that that should still be in force? It is, in fact, from the PSI document of 2015.
Lee Howell: That is a sensible requirement. As a minimum, that seems appropriate. We need to make sure that that is happening in practice and indeed that it is tested.
The Chair: You say that you need to make sure it is happening, but, in truth, the reality is that it hardly ever happens. The nearest equivalent we get to having it is a computer-based modelling exercise carried out by managers, the very people who themselves, in the event of a need for an evacuation, would not be involved in having any responsibility for the evacuation.
Is there not something dreadfully wrong? I know how difficult it is to evacuate a prison or part of a prison. I appreciate that absolutely entirely, but nevertheless, if there is a PSI that you say makes sense and it is not happening, is there not something dreadfully wrong?
Andrew Fry: It is vitally important that things that are written in plans are tested in the real world. Generally speaking, the strategy for dealing with fires in prison is basically a stay-put policy. You deal with the fire in the prison cell quickly and effectively, and the building structure will prevent that fire from spreading and affecting the safety of other prisoners. We know that that is not always the case. There has been an example recently of fire spread that was not anticipated and the requirement for evacuation.
As a plan A, stay put and the approach that is used is absolutely right, but there needs to be a fallback position of full evacuation. If that is your fallback position, the only time you are going to need it is when something has gone seriously wrong, and therefore staff need to be confident in what they have to do and that it will actually work in those kinds of circumstances.
The Chair: From what you are suggesting, there is a gap between what your expectations are and what the reality is, which leads us into the whole issue of your powers of enforcement.
Q72 Lord Empey: I would like to start off with Justin on this question because he is team leader on the custodial premises. Do you have the right enforcement powers or do you have a shopping list of powers that you would like to have and do not have?
Justin Ashburn: In an ideal world, without Crown immunity, we would have the full powers of the order at our disposal in all environments, including publicly operated prisons, but in reality that is not the case. Lee has already covered this. We do not envisage Crown immunity not being a thing anytime soon.
As of now, we are exercising what we have within our legal gift in the public prison environment. The step away accelerated that beyond serving notices, which basically have no statute, if you will, and cannot be challenged by the responsible person through appeal through the courts either, I might add, as it stands. We are just communicating through the step away at the moment. Ideally, we would like to have full powers in all environments, but we do not.
Lord Empey: Could you give the committee an example of where you have seen an issue? I understand that you have these step-away notices and all this sort of thing, but give us a flavour. Give us something to colour in what you mean.
Justin Ashburn: I can give you something tangible in terms of when we have served a notice in a particular environment. A hypothetical environment would be a prison that was remiss of in-cell automatic fire detection and was experiencing a high number of cell fires per annum. We have examples of injuries. The design of the wing is also a closed landing environment, so not a traditional atrium environment from Victorian prisons; I am sure you could all picture it in your heads.
With a closed corridor environment during a cell fire, potentially that corridor is going to be compromised by smoke when the cell door is opened. That affects the visibility and toxicity of the environment for the people operating in it and the prisoners residing in it. If you do not have the right firefighting equipment, i.e. water misting equipment, clearly you have a fire strategy that is failing.
From our perspective, we are going to communicate that in terms of enforcing that. There is also potential for prohibiting something. I know that sounds inflammatory, but out in the civilian world, for example, in a care home or a hospital where you have vulnerable individuals and you have a fire alarm system that is either not there or not operating, you are potentially restricting the use of that building. There is not a fire and rescue authority in the country that is not going to consider that approach.
We do not have those tools at our disposal. Clearly, doing that in a prison environment creates a whole multitude of logistical, political, reputational, moral and legal problems for those responsible. That is a potential scenario that you could have, but we would serve a Crown enforcement notice where we found that you had ineffective or missing automatic fire detection in a residential area, if you had ineffective water misting equipment and you had no mechanical smoke control to clear the smoke from a corridor-approach environment. Indeed, we have numerous notices that remain extant, including step-away notices, where they are failures contained within the schedules.
Lord Empey: Are you consulted about the design of new prisons or alteration to existing prisons?
Justin Ashburn: For new prisons, we definitely are. It is not isolated to just prisons. Sometimes people send the consultations to the local authority because they do not realise that we are the enforcing authority and the statutory consultee in that process. Yes, we are consulted at the design stage and we will make comment under building regulations, so we have no problem with that aspect.
Retrofitting is something different and can be problematic, particularly in the old Victorian prisons, for obvious reasons. That has been spoken about before.
Lord Empey: You are consulted about the retrofits as well.
Justin Ashburn: It should go through building regulations consultation, but it is not down to us to find that. We are supposed to be informed by the applicant, which would be, in the main, HMPPS or the Ministry of Justice.
Lord Empey: You are informed rather than consulted. Is that what you are saying?
Justin Ashburn: No, I am not saying that. I am saying that we would be consulted, but I cannot say what I do not know. If there have been examples—and I am not saying there are—where retrofits have occurred but we are not aware of them and have not been consulted, I cannot comment on whether that is a thing or not. I have had examples, as have colleagues in the team, where we have been consulted on retrofitted fire safety improvement works with building regulations and a registered building inspector.
Lee Howell: In terms of the powers that we currently have, in the last few weeks we have decided that we need to escalate those letters to ministerial level. That is a process we have put in place because, ultimately, Ministers will hold senior civil servants to account for the delivery of the improvements that we have identified.
Andy mentioned publishing the Crown enforcement notices and providing a bit more visibility, allowing scrutiny to be exercised. That is what we have done within the existing arrangement that we can enhance, but we are also looking at other arrangements that other agencies and government departments have to raise concerns to elicit a response. We are in the process of understanding what that looks like and then taking a view on that.
Andrew Fry: Specifically, we are aware that the Health and Safety Executive has a process that it can use for Crown censure. Also, HMI Prisons has a process that involves it writing a formal letter to the Secretary of State, which they are required to respond to within 28 days.
The thing that we are interested in, as you would expect, is the outcome and getting fire safety deficiencies fixed as quickly as possible. In the absence of a power to hold responsible persons to account through the courts, we need to look at all the other levers that are available to us to apply the necessary pressure to get the work done in a reasonable amount of time. That is the range of options that we are looking at currently.
We think there is more that we can do. Whether it gets us to a point we are happy with in the end, we will have to wait and see.
Q73 The Chair: Apologies, I should know this, but I am now getting myself a bit confused. In relation to the Chief Inspector of Prisons, at the moment if he sends a report the Government are required, as you said, to respond within 28 days. You have made what is a great decision—I commend you for it—of making your notices public, which is a really good move on transparency. Am I correct in thinking that, at the moment, there is not the 28-day requirement to respond? Presumably, one of the recommendations you want is at least a requirement that they respond and that that response is published.
Justin Ashburn: When we send a notice out, in the narrative that supports the schedule to the Crown enforcement notice, it requires the duty holder to provide us with an action plan within 28 days of that notice being served. We ask them to respond at that point.
The Chair: There is a requirement for a 28-day response.
Justin Ashburn: We ask for it. We do get them. There has never been a case where we do not get one, but our powers are limited by Article 49 of the fire safety order. We can make the request for it and we generally get a response in the form of an action plan.
Andrew Fry: That is absolutely right in terms of the enforcement notices, which are formal notices. A step that we have introduced as an informal escalation is the issue of a step-away letter, which is a different thing. It is not a statutory notice.
In the arrangements that we have in place, there is no expectation that we will receive a response within a specific period. In the letter we confirm that, until we hear news that the deficiencies that the enforcement notice related to have been fixed, that enforcement notice remains extant, and we are now notifying you that those risks still exist. We know about them and you know about them. In the event of a serious fire happening, there is evidence now available, which will be in the public domain, that demonstrates that you were aware of these risks and did not respond to them in what we considered to be an appropriate period.
The Chair: There is one thing we would be grateful for—not now because time will run out. In terms of the question asked about the details, when you go away, if you could think of any specific, realistic changes to your powers, we would be very keen to know. We have the opportunity, with the report, to raise it with Ministers and make it public, and of course we have the Minister coming here in about 10 minutes, so we might end up asking those questions of him anyway.
Q74 Baroness Berridge: Mr Fry, you mentioned that there had been an occasion recently of needing to evacuate rather than a cell-contained fire. Having previously been a volunteer for a charity, at any one time in the prison, it is quite surprising how many volunteers are on the premises as well, whether that is through chaplaincy or the IMB.
In all that I have seen, it is about staff and the prisoners. Whether it is guidance or enforcement, is there ever a case for saying in a step-away letter that the situation is such that volunteers should not be within that prison estate at that time? What is the duty regarding staff to the volunteers in the estate at the time?
Andrew Fry: The fire safety order is very specific. It is focused on the life safety of not just people who work in prisons or the prisoners, but anybody who resorts to the premises. In carrying out the risk assessment, the risk assessors should look at who is likely to be in the prison apart from the prisoners and the staff, and make sure that they receive the information they need about fire procedures, et cetera, when they arrive so that their safety is looked after properly. When we audit the quality of their fire risk assessments, that is a factor that we take into consideration, I am sure.
Q75 Lord Dubs: Good morning. There seem to be a number of inspectorates and regulators that have some involvement with this whole area. How does the CPFSI work with these other bodies such as HMIP on coroners’ inquests? What level of co-operation is there or would you like there to be?
Lee Howell: There is co-operation. Our notices are copied to HMI Prisons on all occasions, so they are cited. When we have a concern, we notify HMIP. It can then use that as part of its intelligence planning and inspection planning arrangements.
We get some degree of reports from HMIP. However, we have written and are in the process of arranging a series of meetings with HMI Prisons to see how we can make the arrangements between CPFSI and HMI Prisons more effective. We have a memorandum of understanding that clarifies information sharing and includes issues such as shadowing of visits, which is great, but we feel that there is another conversation that is needed to strengthen that relationship and to strengthen the information sharing.
Linked to that, there is a cross-government information-sharing agreement that we are not currently signatories to. We have requested to be a signatory to that arrangement. In reality, it does not stop us sharing information; it would just demonstrate that we are working in a more integrated way. There is more that we can and should do to do that, but we share information. We certainly provide HMI Prisons with our findings, and there is more to be done there.
Justin Ashburn: Can I just pick up on the HMIP relationship? Earlier in the conversation, we were talking about how we develop our risk-based inspection programme. We will analyse HMIP draft reports and pick out any safety-related factors. That is an additional part of the relationship where that information sharing is an additional risk factor that we will consider when we are developing our risk-based inspection programme.
Lord Dubs: Should your assessments, as a matter of course, be included in the reports of other relevant inspectorates? In other words, if you have done an assessment, should that also be something that they take note of and in fact publish?
Lee Howell: HMI Prisons and CPFSI are doing two things that are separate, but there is an overlap. That sharing of information is key. This example is one of those. We cannot and do not require our findings to be reflected in their reports. They would say it is for them to determine what goes into their reports.
There is more that we can do, not least about shared understanding of risk. For example, going back to an earlier point about training, if we identify concerns in terms of the degree to which training is effective to mitigate a fire safety area of concern, there might also be something of interest for HMI Prisons to think about. Is there a wider training deficiency elsewhere within the prison? The two things can work together. They are different, but they should work better together, and that is something that we want to improve moving forward.
Lord Dubs: It is therefore something we might comment on in our report.
Q76 The Chair: We are coming to the end. Can I ask you a very simple question? Do you believe that all prison officers should know what to do in the event of a fire?
Andrew Fry: Yes.
The Chair: Do you believe that all prison officers do know what to do in the event of a fire?
Andrew Fry: Not 100%, I would suspect, because of the reality of staff turnover and the number of new prison officers. We are confident that the vast majority of prison officers have had a basic level of training and so understand in theory what they should do, but, because of levels of turnover, it is on the record that, while prison officers in very high numbers might understand the theory of what they need to do, many of them do not have practical experience of applying that training.
That creates a risk that we are live to. Lee explained earlier the way that our inspectors triangulate information by actually talking to the inspectors when they are in prisons to see whether what they say they would do in the event of a fire reflects what they have heard and read in policy documents and training records, et cetera.
The Chair: Do all prisoners know what to do in the event of a fire?
Andrew Fry: I do not know, Chair.
Lee Howell: That is a very good question. It is something that we will take away, because we would be interested in knowing the answer to that too.
The Chair: Are you aware of the fire arrangements of this building? Are you aware that all the prisoners here are required to go through, every single year, a very detailed online exercise? If we do not do it, we have our Chief Whips or relevant conveners getting very concerned about our statistics. It is a big issue in this building, and that is true of the staff who work here and everything else.
I have to say that I find the difference between this place, where we are all free to walk out of it, and prisons, where prisoners are not, slightly worrying. The concept of prisoners knowing what to do in the event of a fire is never raised by HMPPS or anybody.
Justin Ashburn: In our inspections, we will look at that as part of the preventative measures ahead of looking at the general fire precaution measures. That is about information that is provided to prisoners as part of their induction process and their prison journey.
That is more challenging for the Prison Service, particularly where they are on remand or the churn is high and they are moving through the prison estate, because it is more difficult to embed those well-thought-out and purposeful messages. We recognise that. We examine that information to prisoners as part of our inspection process.
The Chair: I am afraid we must come to an end. Finally, the Government, rather belatedly in our view, announced that they were not going to meet their 2027 targets. We know all about that, but we also know that a very large number of prisoners do not even have automatic fire detection installed. What is your belief as to how quickly AFD in all prisons will be in place? Is that a key issue for you?
Andrew Fry: Yes, it is absolutely a key issue for us, partly because, while HMPPS takes a whole-estate view when it is putting its programme of fire safety improvements together, our focus, because we regulate the fire safety order, is on individual prison premises. Where we identify fire safety deficiencies, one thing that we need to know if we are going to issue and have a notice discharged is how long it is going to take to fix the deficiencies.
Both in terms of the work that we do and on the point of accountability, I know it is complex, but it is very important that there are clear deadlines attached to the fire safety improvement works that HMPPS is proposing to do.
The Chair: Thank you. That is very helpful. We will raise the issue of deadlines in a few minutes with the Minister.
On behalf of the committee, thank you so much. We fully appreciate that you are relatively new in this job share, which is also itself a different situation. We have been very impressed by the grasp you have of the situation already.
We are very much grateful for your answers. If there are further things you want to draw to our attention or anything you want to add, please get in touch with us as quickly as possible. On behalf of the entire committee, thank you all very much indeed.
