News Room

Watch National Chair Mark Fairhurst give evidence at Justice and Home Affairs Committee Tuesday 14 January 2025

In a blistering evidence session to the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee Mark Fairhurst, National Chair of the Prison Officers Association told the committee that a major crisis in recruitment and retention is destabilising prisons and endangering staff and prisoners. 

“This is a shocking report that exposes widespread organised criminal activity, serious violence and rampant drugs misuse as commonplace in this Prison.

“This Inspection Report is further evidence of the crisis in the UK’s prisons. The use of drones to deliver drugs and phones into the jail, low morale amongst staff, rising levels of violence, poor and unsanitary conditions and high levels of sickness absence were all identified by inspectors who visited Long Lartin.”

The Chair of the trade union that represents the UK’s 32,000 Prison Officers told MPs of the intolerable pressures faced by staff working in the country’s prisons and the impact it is having on prisoner rehabilitation. 

Prison Officers Association Chair Mark Fairhurst will give evidence to the Justice and Home Affairs Committee inquiry into Prison Culture: Governance, Leadership and Staffing.

MyCSP confirmed that the Rollback Annual Benefit Statements 2024 for members with a deferred choice underpin 2024 would not be issued.

Please find attached NEC minutes, for the 11th December2024 for your information.

Please bring the contents of this circular to the attention of all POA members.