Source · SPSO (Scottish Public Services Ombudsman)

Scottish Prison Service

SPSO (Scottish Public Services Ombudsman) Not Upheld Reference 201204986 Sector Prisons Category other Decided 01 July 2013

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Full decision

Summary

Mr C, who is a prisoner, complained that prisoners only had access to water which was not as good quality as the water available to staff in his prison. Our investigation established that this was not the case. Staff and prisoners had access to water coolers of different types. For reasons of flexibility, staff tended to have the type with bottled water and prisoners tended to have the type that require proximity to a water tap (at which point the water went through a filtration process). In any case, we found that prisons were not required to provide anything other than normal tap water for prisoners.

Mr C considered that the prison's reply to his complaint about the above was wrong because he thought it conflicted with another reply he had received. However, we were satisfied that this was not the case.

Related reading

View Decision Report 201204986 as a PDF (11.04 KB) Updated: March 13, 2018

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