Press Releases

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.

Union says Winchester is a damning example of the crisis in the Prison Service

In a blistering evidence session to the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee Mark Fairhurst, National Chair of the Prison Officers Association told the committee that a major crisis in recruitment and retention is destabilising prisons and endangering staff and prisoners. 

“This is a shocking report that exposes widespread organised criminal activity, serious violence and rampant drugs misuse as commonplace in this Prison.

“This Inspection Report is further evidence of the crisis in the UK’s prisons. The use of drones to deliver drugs and phones into the jail, low morale amongst staff, rising levels of violence, poor and unsanitary conditions and high levels of sickness absence were all identified by inspectors who visited Long Lartin.”

The Chair of the trade union that represents the UK’s 32,000 Prison Officers told MPs of the intolerable pressures faced by staff working in the country’s prisons and the impact it is having on prisoner rehabilitation. 

Prison Officers Association Chair Mark Fairhurst will give evidence to the Justice and Home Affairs Committee inquiry into Prison Culture: Governance, Leadership and Staffing.

The POA welcome the publication of the employment rights bill as a step forward for workers but has said it has done nothing to address the rights of Prison Officers, who have been denied the right to strike since 1994, and denied the right to take any form of industrial action since a permanent injunction was imposed on the POA in 2019.

The Institute of Employment Rights (IER) launches Pay Review Bodies report alongside Trade Unions.

The POA Union which represents Prison Officers working in Youth Custody Prisons in England and Wales has today written to the Government warning them that a tragedy within youth prisons is imminent if they do not provide adequate protections for staff.