Source · IMB Annual Report
Wayland
Year: 2025
Published: 29 Jan 2026
Type: Prison · Cat C
Population: 1,000
Recommendations: 12
Key concerns
Positive findings
The Wayland IMB's 2025 prisoner attitudes survey reveals a concerning decline in prisoner safety and trust, alongside persistent issues with basic decency standards in accommodation. While some improvements were noted in literacy support and property reception, significant challenges remain in staff-prisoner relationships, access to healthcare appointments, and the overall restrictiveness of the regime. The report highlights high levels of loneliness and a substantial drop in family visits, urging management to address these core concerns to improve prisoner welfare and prepare them for release.
Positive findings
The Board noted improvements in prisoners receiving property promptly, and a significant increase in satisfaction with healthcare complaint responses. There was also a positive trend in staff helping with post-release problems and in literacy support. Communication about regime matters and the usefulness of prisoner forums have also seen positive increases. The Board commended the prison for digitising the survey and prisoners for their responsible participation, noting overall positive movement in many core staff-prisoner relationship metrics.
Key concerns
Safety
Repeated
Low levels of personal safety and a significant decline in interpersonal trust among prisoners, with 50% trusting no other prisoner.
Estate/Conditions
Repeated
Persistent and widespread issues with basic decency standards in cells, including cleanliness on arrival, availability of cleaning materials, condition of furniture, and weekly bedding changes.
Staffing
Repeated
Poor and inconsistent staff-prisoner relationships, marked by dismissive behaviour, a ‘them vs us’ culture, lack of respect, and limited time for meaningful interaction, further exacerbated by a perception of low-experienced staff.
Healthcare
Repeated
Deterioration in healthcare access, with appointment ease returning to previous low levels, and issues with the quality of responses to healthcare complaints, including staff attitudes and medication management.
Regime/Time Out of Cell
A restrictive and depressing regime with limited time out of cell, frequent cancellation of association due to staff shortages, and infrastructure failures impacting food provision.
Mental Health
Repeated
High levels of loneliness among prisoners (61%), with only a quarter of those confiding in staff receiving help.
Resettlement/Release
Repeated
A significant drop in family and friend visits (to 43%), primarily due to distance, highlighting challenges in maintaining external relationships.
Recommendations
| # | Recommendation | Addressee | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Board recommends that there is in consequence the opportunity to develop a ‘new prisoner training program’ to help such prisoners craft and navigate their way into and through their new experience before the challenges appear in a less protected environment in their allocated units. | Governor / Director | |
| 2 | We make a similar observation about the needs of the more experienced, those who think they have ‘seen it all before’. This group, the majority, could benefit from a program which makes it clear to them that the prison will challenge unacceptable behaviour but will also offer tangible improvements over their potential expectations and help them on a better path to their progression and resettlement than they may have experienced previously. The Board would so recommend. | Governor / Director | |
| 3 |
We therefore make a similar recommendation this year as we have done in previous years; that more focused staff training is needed for all staff. We would now add to that general call that this should especially be for those in the new induction unit. Staff of this unit should not believe that they can solve all the problems that receptions present, but they should be able to understand the importance of identifying needs, at least starting the signposting of the most appropriate staff for ongoing involvement, and preparing key-working staff so they these latter staff can hit the ground running with their new clients. This could all be part of a formalised induction plan with, importantly, a copy provided for the prisoner. We would hope that senior staff consider how these observations could best be responded to, thus ensuring the value of the new induction programme and enlist the willing involvement of new prisoners in their sentence planning and progression.
Repeated
Response
Training for prison staff is being transformed under the Enable Programme by taking a psychologically and operationally informed approach with a strong focus on relational practice. This approach will ensure that staff feel safe, supported, valued, and become confident in their skills and ability to make a difference. Work is currently taking place to develop the current foundation training for new entry prison officers into a 12-month modular package that supports ongoing development. This will allow new prison officers the opportunities to apply new knowledge and skills in a live working environment before being required to fulfil all aspects of the role. The Enable Team is working with subject matter experts, such as the Offender Management in Custody & Pre-release Team, to ensure this foundation training fully explores what is needed to support Key Work. Locally, HMP Wayland has a priority around ‘the development and support of staff to enhance their skills, wellbeing and resilience’. Training plans are in place for all staff, with regular Tuesday afternoon shutdowns taking place to support development within roles. Recent changes have provided clearer expectations for Key Work sessions and entries, which is enabling staff to focus on delivering purposeful and effective Key Working to prisoner. |
Governor / Director | In progress |
| 4 | Throughout the years of our surveys a significant number of respondents have been willing to say that they have indeed felt lonely in Wayland. The IMB would, therefore, ask if staff are aware of how lonely many prisoners are. Of course, the loneliness quotient may ebb and flow in any one person, but surely it must be a component of mental well, or ill, being, and, if so, are staff trained to look for the signs of loneliness, and perhaps sensitively question prisoners about their current social life? Are there strategies to address this problem through, perhaps, interest groups across unit boundaries, and is loneliness associated with a lack of literacy and how should that be addressed through education and or the Shannon Trust? The IMB suspects that this important contingent of a prisoner’s social life, and therefore his social health, is not given the attention it needs and would recommend that prison management review the issue to examine other prisons’ experiences and, possibly, knowledge of how to address this issue successfully.’ We so recommend again this year in 2025. Repeated | Governor / Director | |
| 5 | It might also be helpful if some training could be devised for operational staff to give them greater confidence in discussing this issue, say, within their key-working responsibilities. The Board would so recommend. | Governor / Director | |
| 6 |
The only recommendation which the Board believes it can make in response to these results is to ask senior and operational management to take note of them, and look for ways of rebuilding a sense of community amongst all prisoners in decision-making arenas where and when managerial impacts on the community are under review.
Response
Despite the prison’s ongoing challenges, I was encouraged that the Board reported the prison feeling cleaner, receiving swifter repairs and prison grounds being well tended which have all been recognised in the prison’s positive external living conditions audit. It was pleasing to read the atmosphere and cooperation between prisoners and staff has been maintained and that the regime and time out of cell is now more predictable. I was also encouraged by the development of the library into more of a community hub and the increase in peer roles into a variety of areas to allowing prisoners to take responsibility and make a positive contribution. |
Governor / Director | Implemented |
| 7 |
This situation does give extra weight to proposals that either give longer for visits or additional facilities such as remote visiting. The Board would encourage such further initiatives.
Response
Accumulated Visits are still active and prisoners are able to apply as per PSI 16/2011 Providing Visits and Services to Visitors which provides details for Governors on the process and procedures around accumulated visits. HMP Wayland adheres to this national policy by providing information to prisoners about accumulated visits and the Assisted Visits Scheme. All applications are individually reviewed and processed accordingly. However, it should be noted that transferring for the purpose of accumulated visits may be denied for a variety of reasons, such as the receiving prison Governor refusing the request on grounds of risk to security, safety or good order. It is also recognised that there may be logistical reasons for not allowing the request to go ahead such as population pressures at the receiving prison the prisoner has requested. |
Governor / Director | Noted |
| 8 |
The contact metrics are definitely moving in the right direction, an excellent basis on which to build a staff training programme which will build confidence in staff’s skills to manage the sessions, and benefit prisoners by increasing their meaningfulness to their own particular case. We so urge prison management to do.
Response
Training for prison staff is being transformed under the Enable Programme by taking a psychologically and operationally informed approach with a strong focus on relational practice. This approach will ensure that staff feel safe, supported, valued, and become confident in their skills and ability to make a difference. Work is currently taking place to develop the current foundation training for new entry prison officers into a 12-month modular package that supports ongoing development. This will allow new prison officers the opportunities to apply new knowledge and skills in a live working environment before being required to fulfil all aspects of the role. The Enable Team is working with subject matter experts, such as the Offender Management in Custody & Pre-release Team, to ensure this foundation training fully explores what is needed to support Key Work. Locally, HMP Wayland has a priority around ‘the development and support of staff to enhance their skills, wellbeing and resilience’. Training plans are in place for all staff, with regular Tuesday afternoon shutdowns taking place to support development within roles. Recent changes have provided clearer expectations for Key Work sessions and entries, which is enabling staff to focus on delivering purposeful and effective Key Working to prisoner. |
Governor / Director | In progress |
| 9 | The Board would encourage the healthcare contractor, Practice Plus, to consider these findings, perhaps carry out their own assessments of the situation, and take such action as required to at least return these metrics onto an improving path. | NHS / Healthcare Provider | |
| 10 | The Board would like to suggest that Practice Plus seriously consider running a survey of their own amongst prisoners to test for themselves the themes we have bulleted above, and also, as a response to the themes we have identified, to consider providing a clear confirmation of the diagnosis made and treatment to be provided after a consultation so the prisoner has something tangible to review and not just his memory of what the consultation concluded and why. | NHS / Healthcare Provider | |
| 11 | is to create a clearer, and firmer, standard by which a cell is declared ‘clean’, before occupation, including accurate statements of the quantity and quality of furniture provided, adequate time for staff to make the assessment and for the new occupant to agree its correctness, and, where there is a deficiency of cleanliness or equipment, a date or time by which it will be put right. The Board further believes there should be a tighter standard for those cells which are shared under the current requirement for doubled occupation of single cells. Repeated | Governor / Director | |
| 12 |
At the very least we would suggest that the Prison Service set a victualling allowance at the start of each year, and then arrange that this be automatically increased on a monthly basis as required by food cost inflation data. At least that would allow some degree of predictability in menu planning and delivery.
Response
To enable full and effective use of the HMPPS budget, prisons are delegated their whole budget as soon as possible, including the share of allocated inflation funding. As a result, no funding is held back centrally to provide further increases during the year. Funding allocated to prisons for prisoner food has increased incrementally in recent years, rising from £2.18 per prisoner per day in 2022–2023 to £3.01 in 2024–2025. Funding for 2025–2026 has also increased and it remains the case that the Governor in public prisons have the flexibility to manage their overall non-pay budget according to the specific needs of their population. It is recognised that food costs can be a challenge when providing healthy food, as is the availability of ingredients, but the Catering Manager at HMP Wayland is working hard to comply with the new Food in Prisons Policy Framework. As a result, it may not always be possible to provide the food options prisoners wish to see despite a varied menu still being available with a minimum four weekly cycle with five meal options for both lunch and dinner. |
HMPPS | Rejected |
Related inspections & investigations
26 Jan 2026
HMIP · Unannounced
Other reports for Wayland
Report details
- Establishment
- Wayland
- Type
- Prison · Cat C
- Report year
- 2025
- Published
- 29 January 2026
- Responsible body
- HMP Wayland
- Recommendations
- 12
- MoJ rating (2024/25)
- 3 — Good
Population
| Population | 1,000 |
| Time out of cell | 10.0h/day |