News Room

Welcome to the POA News room, find all the latest updates, including POA Circulars, Press releases, articles and Breaking news.

For years the POA has been calling for urgent action to address overcrowding and understaffing in our prisons and long term action to address offending and reoffending rates but successive Ministers have ignored our calls.

The POA are not regulated to give pension advice or financial advice in relation to retirement planning. The POA are not insured or indemnified in relation to giving incorrect advice on pensions or retirement planning.  The POA do assist where a member has a complaint around the administration of their pension, and that assistance is usually limited to signposting to the MYCS ...

Please find attached NEC minutes for the 22nd January 2025 for your information.

 

Labour should deliver on its promise to introduce the “biggest wave of insourcing in a generation” by bringing prisons maintenance contracts back “in house”, says the union representing the UK’s 32,000 Prison Officers and Operational Support Staff. 

The Union representing the UK’s 35,000 prison officers has called for urgent action to address longstanding concerns of their members at HMP Durham. 

The TUC have recently conducted research into the effects of night work on workers.

The Durham Miners Gala takes place on Saturday 12 July 2025. The POA have had a presence at the Gala for many years.

The Union representing the UK’s 35,000 Prison and Operational Support Grade Officers is calling for urgent action to address soaring levels of violence in jails in England and Wales. 

 

Please bring the contents of this circular to the attention of all POA members.

Prison Officers and those working in Operational Support Grades in England and Wales need an urgent pay rise to help address recruitment and retention problems across the prison estate.

Representing over 30,000 Prison, Correctional and Secure Psychiatric Workers, the POA is the largest UK Union in this sector, able to trace its roots back more than 100 years.