Recommendation 8

HM Government Acknowledged

We recognise that the restrictions we have needed to impose for public health reasons have had consequences for the wellbeing of those in our care. Despite any national or local restrictions, we aim to maintain regimes that are as open as possible. After the national lockdown, and as was the case in the community, we adopted a localised approach, with a staggered reopening of regimes in different prisons. Exceptional Delivery Models (EDMs) were developed for high priority elements of prison regimes, taking account of a wide range of consultees including recognised trade unions, staff, external partners and public health colleagues. We identified activities where the risks to be lower and where activity was important to safety and wellbeing. This included offender management, education, employment, progression and resettlement. The Government then introduced a three-tier system in England. It was essential that we continued to review regimes in prisons and that they remained consistent with the increased risk in the community. We responded in a measured way, in line with public health advice, to ensure that we continued to protect the health and wellbeing of the staff and prisoners in our care. With the recent resurgence of incidence rates in the community and the implementation of a second national lockdown, we did not return to the lockdown of regimes as we did in March, based on the new mitigations available to us. Once national restrictions ended on 2 December, we returned to our approach under the previous tiering system. As before, we are suspending social visits in Tier 3 areas except for limited compassionate reasons, including visits to children. Only a handful of prisons have needed to return temporarily to Stage 4 of the National Framework, in order to control outbreaks. The majority of the estate is operating at Stage 3, which involves greater time out of cell. HMP Hollesley Bay is the first establishment to move to Stage 2, allowing the governor to further extend the regime. We have recently reviewed the Stage 3 EDMs in consultation with stakeholders to ensure that they remain proportionate and sustainable for the winter period. We identified some areas where regimes could be safely expanded within Stage 3 (subject to local risk assessment) and have made amendments to the EDMs to facilitate this. These amendments were published and communicated to establishments on Friday 27 November. We continue to work with Public Health in both England and Wales to ensure that our regimes remain current, and have introduced a range of measures, including the use of testing and additional PPE, to enable prisons to maintain fuller regimes in a safe way. We have also worked closely with the Welsh Government to ensure we have responded to any divergence in regulations between England and Wales that might affect regimes, including for example travel restrictions that have affected the ability for social visits to take place.