News

The 2024-25 annual report for HMP Bure is now published.

The 2024-25 annual report for HMP/YOI Stoke Heath is now published.

Elisabeth Davies stepped down from her role as National Chair of the Independent Monitoring Boards at the end of 2025. We would like to thank her for her contribution during her tenure.

Elisabeth Davies, the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) National Chair, has today written to the Prisons Minister, Lord Timpson, raising concerns over significant cuts to education budgets in prisons. The letter includes findings from IMBs that suggest real-term cuts at a local level significantly exceed the inflationary pressures cited by the Prison Service. As a result, courses have already been, and will continue to be cut back dramatically across all categories of prison, leaving prisoners spending even more time locked in their cells and preventing them from making progress. Releasing prisoners without the right experience or qualifications to make a fresh start in the community simply sets them up to fail.

The 2024-25 annual report for HMP Altcourse is now published.

The 2024-25 annual report for Scotland and Northern Ireland STHF is now published.

The 2024-25 annual report for HMP Birmingham is now published.

The 2024-25 annual report for HMP Wormwood Scrubs is now published.

In July 2023 the Chief Inspector of Prisons declared HMP Bristol ‘one of the most unsafe prisons in the country’. The 2024-2025 annual report from the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) at HMP Bristol (published 11 December 2025), draws attention to the areas of sustained improvement observed in the prison, while highlighting the ongoing concerns that the Board still has.

Despite the Independent Monitoring Board’s (IMB) 2023 thematic report warning that women in acute mental distress were being imprisoned due to a chronic shortage of secure psychiatric hospital beds, two years later the IMB’s 2024–25 annual report for HMP/YOI Bronzefield (published 10 December 2025) highlights that these serious concerns remain largely unresolved.