A prisoner at HMP Ranby did not receive healthcare to the level he could have expected in the outside community before he died, according to the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman.
Christopher Walton, 67, died at the prison in February 2025. The Ombudsman, Adrian Usher, investigated his death and found that Mr Walton’s health had been getting noticeably worse.
His family had rung the prison’s health line to raise their worries about him. The investigation found nobody acted on those calls, and the messages were described as “unrecorded”. Logging should have happened before deletion, but it did not.
The Ombudsman also found that no one had looked properly at the time into whether Mr Walton was taking his medication. No specialist staff had responsibility for his treatment.
The report described the healthcare unit at Ranby as chronically understaffed. When Mr Walton died, prison officers had no way to demand an urgent health assessment for a prisoner. Checks on prisoners who looked seriously unwell were also inadequate.
Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust held the healthcare contract at Ranby at the time of the death. In April 2025 the trust announced that it would withdraw from its prison contracts. It said it wanted to concentrate on providing better services in other sectors.
Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust has run healthcare at the prison since October.
Several inquests had criticised the Nottinghamshire trust, including inquests concerning HMP Lowdham Grange and HMP Nottingham. The trust also faced accusations of failures in its care of a mental health patient who killed three people in Nottingham while supposedly under its treatment.
HMP Ranby is a category C prison for men in the East Midlands. At its last full inspection before the Ombudsman’s findings, in May 2025, inspectors judged it not sufficiently good on safety, respect, purposeful activity and preparation for release.
