The Howard League for Penal Reform has identified prisons in England and Wales that are still waiting for fire safety work. Seven of them have had fatal fires.
The charity said the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) had known for almost 20 years that tens of thousands of prisoners were living in cells that fell short of legal fire safety standards.
Automatic fire detection (AFD) in cells is a legal requirement, but around a quarter of cells do not have it. Successive governments have pledged to install the equipment.
In January 2026, HM Prison and Probation Service wrote to the Crown Premises Fire Safety Inspectorate. The letter, which the Howard League uncovered, said the service would not meet a 2027 deadline to fit AFD. It also said the department had no plans to set a replacement date.
More than 60 prisons waiting
According to the Howard League, more than 60 prisons were awaiting fire safety improvements in the autumn of 2025. The charity obtained the documents through a request under the Freedom of Information Act.
The list included Stocken, Eastwood Park, Swaleside, Risley, Wealstun, Chelmsford and Holme House. Each of these has seen a fatal fire in the last 15 years.
More than 40 prisons were still waiting for AFD, which alerts staff to a fire straight away. One was Eastwood Park, where Clare Dupree suffered fatal injuries in a fire in December 2022.
In March 2026, an inquest jury at Avon Coroner’s Court found there had been “missed opportunities” to prevent her death. The jury also found that a “lack of automatic in-cell fire detection caused a delay in detecting the fire”. More than three years later, her cell still has no AFD.
The Howard League has asked for updated lists. It wants to know how many cells in each prison are affected, when work will begin and how long it will take. So far, the MoJ has refused to provide this information.
In October 2025, the charity sent pre-action letters to five prisons: Eastwood Park, Norwich, Swaleside, Wandsworth and Wetherby. All five carry serious fire safety risks. Work has yet to begin at four of them, including Swaleside and Eastwood Park, which had fatal fires in 2019 and 2022. Wetherby is a young offender institution in Yorkshire and The Humber that holds children aged 15 to 18.
Andrea Coomber, Chief Executive of the Howard League, said fire safety had stayed largely out of view until now. She described the continued use of fire-risk cells, together with the Government’s reversal on the deadline, as “a national scandal”.
She said at least 11 people had died in cell fires since the Government accepted its duty to install AFD, and that families faced “yet more broken promises”.
Ministry of Justice response
An MoJ spokesperson said the department took prison safety extremely seriously and was working to meet fire safety standards across the estate as quickly as it could. The spokesperson said a major programme of improvement works was continuing.
In the meantime, the MoJ said, every cell either connects to an automatic fire detection system or has a smoke detector. Cells without in-cell AFD have a battery-powered smoke detector.
The department said meeting the 2027 deadline would place impossible strain on the overcrowded prison system the Government had inherited. It said it would complete AFD installation as quickly as possible.
According to the MoJ, spending on prison fire safety works totalled £346 million between 2020/21 and 2024/25. It projects spending of £171 million for 2025/26, and has already scheduled £275 million of projects for the next financial year.
