Woodhill

To work with colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care to consider how the pathway through secondary care could be streamlined for prisoners who are transferred after their referral.

I acknowledge your concerns about secondary healthcare referrals. The issue relating to transferring a patient’s care from one hospital to another is seen in both community and in prison. The clinician who is treating the patient in the receiving hospital may wish to undertake additional tests, examinations and consultations due to the legal requirement for them to be able to justify their individual clinical decisions and, for this reason, the transfer can result in delays to the care the patient receives. Some prisoners can be placed on medical hold to remain at a specific prison to prevent their treatment being disrupted. HMP Woodhill holds a complex prisoner population and, in some instances, the Governing Governor may need to overrule a medical hold as this may not be in the prisoner’s best interest, such as for their rehabilitation needs or because the restricted movement of a prisoner constrains the flexibility to efficiently use the prisons capacity. However, there is a good partnership between the prison and the local healthcare providers which ensures each prisoners needs are fully assessed appropriately.

To develop a meaningful plan for the recruitment and retention of prison staff.

It is recognised that recruitment has and continues to be a significant challenge at HMP Woodhill largely due to its competitive local labour market, proximity to other prisons and ease of access to London. Further actions are being taken to increase the numbers of new recruits by running incentivised recruitment schemes where new prison officers can move temporarily for the first 23 months of their service to prisons such as HMP Woodhill to reduce staff vacancies. The HMPPS National Brand Campaign has been launched with sites, such as HMP Woodhill, being targeted for the heaviest level of support. This will be complimented with specific press outreach and marketing. HMP Woodhill has had a dedicated internet page created to increase candidates understanding of the prison officer role and this is linked to the jobs advertised at the prison on Oleeo.
Further to last year’s response, the retention oversight process has taken place at HMP Woodhill and feedback has been shared with the Governor alongside support with relevant interventions from national teams in order to improve the employee experience of working at the prison, such as an enhanced Human Resources Casework Service. Locally, HMP Woodhill is also working through issues within a local retention action plan. Attrition rates continue to be tracked with exit interviews and analysis undertaken to ascertain the impact of the announced pay award and other factors affecting retention rates. As part of HMP Woodhill’s commitment to ‘Value Our People’, wellbeing sessions will be facilitated for staff, with priority initially for Band 3 and 4 operational staff on residential wings. Local factors to address morale will be considered and to further develop the skill set, confidence and resilience of frontline staff, the findings from the Building Confidence and Competence Toolkit will be built upon with thematic reviews.
Keywork will be facilitated as the staffing picture improves and the regime is being reviewed to establish whether any interim solution for enabling keywork sessions for the most vulnerable and complex prisoners can be delivered.

To review the daily spend for prisoners in the light of the current rise in the cost of living.

It was welcoming to note that the Board confirmed an increase in the local food budget at HMP Woodhill since the last report to allow portion sizes to be increased. Further to last year’s response, it remains the case that food budgets continue to be determined locally by the Governor in Public Sector Prisons or the Director in privately managed prisons and these will be kept under review as part of normal budget allocation planning. There are no further plans to raise the daily food allowance at HMP Woodhill, however, the prison is working with the charity, Food Behind Bars and the regional catering manager to hold focus groups with prisoners and re-design menus to ensure the food on offer is both nutritional and meets the diverse needs of the prison.

To review how capital budgets can more effectively be used to maintain the fabric of the prison estate.

Demands for maintenance are much greater than the available funding, therefore HMPPS continues to consider capital funding bids and prioritises these works very carefully to make best use of the funding that is available, focusing on risk to life and risk to capacity and decency. The work which took place on House Unit 1 in 2021 was part of a fire safety improvements project and not a general refurbishment project of all wings. A refurbishment project of the showers across the prison has been in the capital maintenance pipeline for some time and as part of the Urgent Notification process a commission is being drafted to mandate the project to allow timings to be confirmed. It is expected the project will take around 18 months to complete once scheduled. In the short term, the facilities management provider has been instructed to clean and deliver small-scale refurbishments of showers, including the installation of privacy screens where these are lacking. Enabling work was also completed in September 2023 for the flooring on House Unit 3A to be replaced, however, the work requires quotes to be obtained for the four outstanding cells and to complete the work these cells will need to be vacated in due course.
The Board’s concern about the storage of items near stairwells and exits has been actioned with staff regularly reviewing these areas. Wing managers are required to complete checks of the area before the end of each shift. In the long-term, new storage areas will be built to accommodate items such as broken furniture for removal.

To radically overhaul the property system within the prison service.

HMPPS recognises the Board’s concerns about the transfer of prisoners’ property, despite implementation of the new Prisoners’ Property Policy Framework on 5 September 2022. The Framework places an emphasis on ensuring compliance with volumetric control limits, since anything within these limits will be transferred with the prisoner. Volumetric control limits apply to all prisons and the Framework contains a leaflet to explain these limits to prisoners. The Framework introduced a new requirement that prisons must transfer excess property within four weeks unless there are exceptional circumstances which make this impossible. The Framework is clear that Governors should ensure management checks are undertaken to be assured that prisoners’ property is being handled correctly and with care. HMPPS will monitor the impact of the new Framework going forward and will continue to look at what further improvements can be made.

To ensure practical plans are in place to increase the access to meaningful activity for all prisoners within the current resources.

The education and work placements will be expanded as staffing allows.

To work with partners to improve the access to suitable programmes for long term prisoners.