HMP Wayland

Reports

• HMIP11 May 2026

  What should the prison do? We want the governor to read the report we wrote about Wayland and make a plan. The plan should tell us how they will fix the problems at Wayland and make things better for prisoners. You can find the report we wrote in the prison library. What do we want to happen? We want officers to only use force on prisoners when they really need to. We want the prison to do more to stop drugs getting in. We want the prison to make sure staff know what to do if there is an emergency at night. We want prisoners with serious mental health problems to be transferred to a secure hospital quickly. We want broken things to be repaired quickly. We want the prison to be kept in better condition. We want waiting times for health care appointments to be shorter. We want prisoners to be given medicines in a safe way. We want prisoners to get more help to find a job before they leave Wayland. We want prisoners to be able to work every day, Monday to Friday. We want all prisoners to be able to go to activities that will help them. We want prisoners to be able to do the programmes and courses they need before they leave prison. We want prisoners who do not get visitors to get more support. What will we do? We will come back in a few years to check how well the prison is doing. We will write a report to tell people what we find. If you have any questions, please write to us: HM Inspectorate of Prisons 3rd floor 10 South Colonnade Canary Wharf London E14 4PU

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• NPM-uk-imb-respect1 Jan 2024

  5.1 Accommodation, clothing, food Accommodation The Board wishes to report that the work that was carried out during the year, coupled with the mild winter, meant that its previous constant refrain about the poor heating in the new build cells does not need repetition this year. In addition, work has proceeded on the fire safety improvements to these wings, even though this has meant the taking offline of 60 cells at a time for months. In this context, we would observe that if only the internal refurbishment work which everyone agrees is necessary could have been progressed at the same time, the considerable further disruption which will be caused by these works when scheduled could have been avoided. We called for this work to be done in our last report, but have decided to wait until the longer-term refurbishment programme is clearer before making further comment. However, the prison had to contend, as did the prisoners involved, with two other problems with the new build cells: bed bugs and mould. With bed bugs, the prison has had to take cells off line in order to fumigate them properly, as well as high temperature washing of prisoners’ personal clothing and other contaminated items, or the longer process of freezing these, to kill any bugs which had become trapped in such. Specialist firms, and even a specialist dog, have been used in detection of these insects. The prison’s efforts have matured over the reporting period, but we were disappointed with the dismissive [...]

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• NPM-uk-imb-purposeful-activity1 Jan 2024

  Education As we worked on the compilation of this report we had wished to record, indeed we had recorded in a first draft report, that the work of the education provider had continued to develop and had resulted in a greater impact on the cultural life of the prison, which we hoped had further improved the chances of a successful rehabilitation for those prisoners released. However, towards the end of our reporting period, we began to hear disturbing hints of a likely major change in the way that both the education and vocational training provision was to be managed. There was little or no detail from the official side at that time, although the hints within the wider IMB network became stronger that a change to the education budget in all public prisons, not just at Wayland, was being planned. We therefore decided to ‘carry on as normal’ with the compilation of our annual report. In this sense we intended to repeat what we observed last year, and which we include below in italics, with our monitoring showing building on that basis for further improvements in the year. We said then: During the reporting year, art classes have been reintroduced and not only are they appreciated by prisoners, but they can act as a gateway to further educational achievement. By a mixture of educational stealth and design, prisoners who would reject ‘education’ find that, through art and music, it is not the threatening scenario they feared (perhaps through failure at school in earlier years), [...]

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• NPM-uk-imb-preparation-for-release1 Jan 2024

  Last year the Board saw a welcome trend towards a reduction in the applications it has received referencing complaints about their involvement with the offender management unit (OMU). This has continued, although at a slower pace, this year. Many of such applications have referenced the bewildering array of governmental initiatives for early release seen in the reporting year. However, when we have needed information on particularly challenging cases, the staff of the OMU, particularly the senior probation officers, have responded promptly and knowledgeably. Population management schemes We give the early release initiatives prominence in this section of the report as an example of just how much work was needed to ensure that the releases proceeded smoothly. As an overview, however, of the prison-wide impact of these changes, between June 2024 and May 2025 Wayland discharged 741 prisoners. The main areas for discharge were London (25%) and Essex (20%). The ‘local’ region including Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire accounted for only 18% of releases. On discharge, 19% were released into approved premises, 41% were released into some form of 'permanent accommodation', and 17% were released into other forms of supported accommodation. These figures give an indication of the work necessary to achieve these types of discharge when only 41% had a home or other permanent accommodation to go to, and when 20% had to be released with no fixed abode, often due to the extreme urgency [...]

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• NPM-uk-imb-safety1 Jan 2024

  4.1 The triad of: Reception, first night management, and induction Initial reception and property issues Reception has been more than very busy this year, caused by the government’s various emergency measures for the release of prisoners earlier than anticipated, because of the pressure on the Prison Service by increased prisoner numbers. Nevertheless, despite a daily throughput of more than two or three times the designed capacity of the reception areas, the need to process large amounts of property in and out, the improvement in property management noted in last year’s survey, when we reported that 66% of prisoners received their property within two weeks of arrival, double the proportion in 2023, has been repeated again this year with 65% reporting property being received within two weeks. It should be noted that this is largely the result of better management of property which has arrived either with the prisoner, or shortly after, although we have investigated a number of such difficulties where property has ’gone missing,’ only for it to be discovered some weeks after its arrival. Those prisoners still awaiting their property two weeks after transfer has been reduced to 29% still awaiting it in 2025. We believe (from our other IMB activity in responding to prisoners’ applications to the IMB about the failure of the previous prison to post on property still held in that prison) that this is mostly due to sending prisons’ failure to process follow on property promptly. [...]

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• HMIP20 Mar 2023

  1.1 HMP Wayland is a category C training prison near Thetford in Norfolk which held approximately 750 prisoners during our visit in March this year. At our full inspection in April 2022, we found a prison characterised by staff shortfalls, a lack of activity and poor behaviour management. Outcomes had deteriorated in our tests of purposeful activity and rehabilitation and release planning and remained not sufficiently good in safety. 1.2 Our previous inspections of HMP Wayland in 2017 and 2022 recorded the following assessments of outcomes for prisoners. Figure 1: HMP Wayland healthy prison outcomes in 2017 and 2022 Good Reasonably good Not sufficiently good Poor

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• HMIP25 Apr 2022

  HMP Wayland is a category C training prison near Thetford in Norfolk that held 890 prisoners when we inspected in April this year. The remote location on an old RAF base on the edge of Thetford forest has made the recruitment of staff very difficult and at the time of the inspection there were not enough officers to run anything like a proper category C regime. Standards of behaviour in the under-staffed prison had slipped and inspectors often saw prisoners breaking the rules without challenge or adequate supervision from officers, many of whom had only recently begun working in the jail. With experienced prisoners and inexperienced staff, there is a real risk that things could get much worse. The new governor, who had taken over at the end of 2021, had begun to address some of the worst behaviour, sending some of the most troubled prisoners back to category B prisons and aiming to improve the support for newer officers. The staff team appreciated her visibility around the jail and her priorities were generally well understood. Much will need to be done to establish higher standards of behaviour from both prisoners and staff, some of whom we also saw vaping around the prison. To date, the focus had been on sanctions, but leaders will also need to find more positive ways to motivate prisoners to behave well. Wayland seemed to suffer from the same post-COVID-19 inertia that has affected many of the category C prisons we have recently inspected. Workshops and classrooms were mostly empty, and prisoners were spending too much time locked in their cells. Education provision had restarted just days before our arrival although to their credit, teachers had been much more active during the lockdowns than in other jails. Inexplicable restrictions on the number of prisoners allowed into classrooms and workshops – despite prisoners being able to mix freely elsewhere, such as in the kitchens – will need to be lifted if the prison is to be able to provide education and training for more than just a lucky few. During our inspection, leaders introduced a new regime designed to open the prison up and provide more purposeful activity, but the planning was rushed and communication had not been good enough, so that prisoners and staff did not know who was supposed to be where at what time. The general condition of the site was poor. Cells in the older part of the jail were tired looking, many with windows that needed repair. In the newer wings, poor ventilation meant that in-cell showers had mould growing on the walls. Elsewhere, the kitchens were in an awful state and there was a gaping hole in the roof of the visits hall. The recent designation of Wayland as a ‘black’ site for staff recruitment and retention means that it is able to pay staff more to work in the prison. We must hope that this begins to resolve the critical staffing situation, because without sufficient, high-quality officers, there is a real risk that standards of behaviour may deteriorate further and the prison will continue to fail to live up to its category C designation. Charlie Taylor HM Chief Inspector of Prisons June 2022

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