Government urged to act over Oakhill youth prison failings

Inspectors have asked the government for urgent intervention at a youth prison, where boys have been held in their cells for up to 23 hours a day due to inadequate staffing levels.

Ofsted said the children's experiences in the summer at Oakhill Secure Training Centre "barely met minimum standards of human decency".

It said "in some cases unlawful" levels of force were also used on the boys.

Operator G4S said the "safety of children" was its "highest priority".

Ofsted's chief inspector Amanda Spielman has issued a rare urgent notification to the Secretary of State for Justice, Dominic Raab, who has 28 days to come up with a plan for improvement.

The Ministry of Justice said it had temporarily stopped young offenders being sent to Oakhill - from the courts or other youth establishments.

G4S said the pandemic had impacted staffing levels and operations at the Milton Keynes unit. Ofsted said there had been an "annual staff attrition rate of 27%, resulting in unstable, transient relationships with children".

In her letter, Ms Spielman described the centre, which has been rated as requiring improvement or inadequate since 2017, as "in chaos".

She said: "Children live in a dilapidated environment, experience frequent incidents of violence and use of force and are often cared for by inexperienced staff."

Oakhill currently looks after some 35 boys who are deemed vulnerable and assessed as needing more support than can be provided by a typical young offenders' institution.

Following an initial visit prompted by the Youth Custody Service, a full inspection of Oakhill was carried out in October.

Inspectors said they found an "unjustifiable" and "in some cases unlawful" levels of force being used on children as young as 15.

Staff had not received adequate training or support and lacked the skills to carry out restraint safely, while oversight of the use of force was inadequate, the inspection team said.

Systems for keeping children safe were in "disarray", leaving children at risk of serious harm, it added.

Inspectors said while the practice of keeping children locked up for 23 hours a day had ended, "children's experiences during this period were bleak, and barely met minimum standards of human decency".

Staffing at the centre was described as "fragile" with boys being cared for by staff not "equipped with all the information they need to keep them safe or meet their needs".

A new interim director started in September but would only be in place for up to three months, the report added.

G4S said a response team had been sent into the unit, leading to improvements.

"In the last month our team has delivered a full regime of 13 hours out-of-room per child on weekdays and 12 hours per day at weekends.

"From June to the end of September, total incidents reduced by 47% and use of force by 61%, according to internal management data."

The company added it had retrained G4S prison staff who would be deployed to the centre.

It was also in the process of recruiting a permanent director.

The urgent notification process began in 2017. Seven sites have been issued with a notification, with five notifications since removed following sustained improvements, the government said.

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