The prison was given a full inspection in August 2022, the full report can be read on the HM Inspectorate of Prisons website, just follow the links below. In their latest report the inspectors said:
HMP Lancaster Farms is a category C resettlement prison for adult men, run by HM Prison and Probation Service, re-roled from a young offender institution to hold exclusively adult men, currently holding 544 prisoners against an operational capacity of 560. Inspectors rated safety and respect both reasonably good, unchanged, and purposeful activity not sufficiently good, also unchanged, while preparation for release improved to reasonably good, up from not sufficiently good. Violence was 31% lower than at the previous inspection, but inspectors said the prison’s fundamental resettlement purpose was not being delivered.
Eighty per cent of prisoners said staff treated them with respect and 83% could identify a staff member to turn to with a problem, both well above the category C comparator average. Ninety-one per cent felt safe on their first night, segregation use had fallen substantially since the last inspection, and partnership working with housing and substance misuse services in the community was good.
Inspectors nonetheless found that education and vocational training places existed for only around a third of the population, with Ofsted rating provision as requiring improvement, and that time out of cell at weekends was very limited. A quarter of drug tests were positive, dental waiting times ran to 26 weeks, and body-worn camera footage was missing for all baton-drawn use-of-force incidents in the previous year. Legal visits were difficult to arrange and complaints were rarely felt to be dealt with fairly.
Charlie Taylor
HM Chief Inspector of Prisons
October 2022
To read the full reports, go to the HM Inspectorate of Prisons website or follow the links below:
- Inspection report (PDF), Report on an unannounced inspection of HMP Lancaster Farms by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons (15–26 August 2022, published 2 December 2022)
- Action plan, HM Prison and Probation Service action plan in response to the 2022 inspection of HMP Lancaster Farms