Despite 110 injuries and two deaths related to fires in prisons last year, prison leaders remain ‘complacent’ about fire safety in jails in England and Wales.

The House of Lords tasked the Justice and Home Affairs Committee with examining the issue. Their report found HM Prisons and Probation Service (HMPPS) had ‘recognition’ of the problem, but not the ‘restless determination’ required to improve it.

One in five prison places in England still lacks automatic fire detection, despite repeated government promises to improve safety, the committee observed. They found there were 2,830 prison fires in 2025, resulting in 110 injuries and two deaths. It also highlighted the death of Clare Dupree at HMP Eastwood Park in December 2022. The Inquiry further found that the absence of heat and smoke sensors in cells delayed the detection of the fire and contributed to her death. 

The Howard League, a prisons charity, brought a legal challenge on fire safety in October 2025 which highlighted the lack of accountability. Their research found dangerous fire-safety failures at five prisons and at least 10 deaths in cell fires in publicly-run prisons in England and Wales since 2007.

The organisation says that following the threat of litigation, developments included the Government’s adoption of an ‘AFD-first’ (Automatice Fire Detection) approach and the commencement of remedial works at HMYOI Wetherby. 

Despite the Government’s 2007 Fire Safety Improvement Programme, approximately 17,000 prison places remained without automatic fire detection (AFD) in October 2026. The Government had committed in 2022 to installing AFD in all cells by the end of 2027. In March 2026, His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) admitted it would miss this deadline. It expects to complete work on 10,000 of the 19,000 places requiring improvements by the end of 2027, leaving the remaining 9,000 unlikely to be completed ‘until the early 2030s’. The cells will still be used even though they don’t meet the standards due to insufficient prison capacities 

The Committee criticised the lack of transparency, noting that information had sometimes only been obtained through Freedom of Information requests or threats of legal action. It also called for every prison in England to be undergo a ‘full inspection at least once every five years’ as it deemed the current seven-year cycle inappropriate due to the ‘inherent risk to safety from fires in the prison estate.’