An unannounced inspection of HMP Whitemoor, close to Peterborough, has identified ‘significant’ issues that the prison close to Peterborough must address.

The high security prison prison, which is located on Longhill Road in March, was inspected by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons between October 12 and 23.

This was the first visit since 2022 and was held to see if standards had improved in that time. The report into the prison was published on Monday (February 2).

The report found that ‘Whitemoor was doing a difficult job reasonably well but leaders needed to address some significant issues.’

Among those issues highlighted was the fact that the daily routine was ‘inadequate’ which in practice meant that prisoners could not get to education, drug testing or hospital appointments consistently.

There was also found to not be enough places in education, skills and work, along with poor attendance. It added that ‘the lack of purposeful activity made it difficult for prisoners to demonstrate progress.’

This saw the prison rated just one out of four for ‘Things To Do;’ one of the four criteria for which it was judged.

It fared much better in the other areas, the report found that:

- Safety (4 out of 4): The jail was calm. Prisoners felt safe, new windows were helping to stop drones delivering packages, not many prisoners were harming themselves and that PAVA spray had been used on prisoners lots of times.

- Respect (3 out of 4): Staff gave prisoners on the Fens and Bridge units good help, some parts of the prison were not clean enough, prisoners had to wait a long time for health appointments outside the prison.

- Getting ready to leave prison (3 out of 4): Prisoners could get visits from their families quite often, prisoners could see their offender manager quite often and prisoners got help to stop offending.

The report noted that progress had been made in developing staff skills and supporting well-being, with investments in training, coaching, and mentoring.

Going forward, the report stated a number of outcomes it would like to happen this list includes: officers only using PAVA spray on prisoners when they really need to, the prison finding out what Muslim and ethnic minority prisoners need, prisoners to get to dentist and hospital appointments more quickly as well as prisoners with serious mental illness to be moved to secure mental health facilities more quickly.

To view the report in full, visit the HM Inspectorate of Prisons website.