‘A prison officer will get killed’: Staff warn of chaos and violence inside flagship super-prison
Drunken cell parties, fights, stabbings, prison guards with faulty equipment out of their depth.
Welcome to HMP Five Wells in Northamptonshire, where staff Sky News has spoken to claim all these events have taken place, and one guard told us assaults on staff are “a daily event”.
Three prison guards have blown the whistle on life inside the state-of-the-art super-prison run by security firm G4S. They say they are short-staffed, there are too many inexperienced staff, they are under-equipped and there is a culture that is allowing prisoners to run riot.
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“We’re lacking equipment,” said the first officer we met secretly in a car park near to the jail. “We’re lucky if we get a radio to go on to the landings. And we’ve got a very limited amount of bodycams that work. It’s like a lucky dip raffle.”
The man we will call Harry, to protect his identity, said that inmates can tell when the bodycam isn’t functioning. He said life inside the prison is a dangerous mix of inexperienced staff and prisoners who are more aggressive than you might expect in a Category C jail.
“The prisoners run the prison,” he said, adding: “If things don’t change someone is going to get killed.
“And it will be a prison officer. I love my job, but what’s it going to take? Is it going to take for someone to be killed in that place before someone says, we need to do something about this?”
Harry said he and his colleagues are constantly finding homemade or smuggled weapons in the prison. He said a few weeks prior to our interview, a prison officer was stabbed in the head with a metal spike and on the day of our meeting there had been five assaults against members of staff.
HMP Five Wells
Pic: Andy Portch
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Another serving officer recounted the stabbing. Sally (not her real name) also decided to blow the whistle, and we met her separately away from the prison.
She said: “My fear is something major is going to happen there. Someone’s going to get stabbed, or somebody is going to get murdered within that prison, be it a staff member or a prisoner.”
She added abuse is common. “We get urine and faeces thrown in our face. We get spat at. We get things thrown at us. An officer got stabbed a few weeks ago. We get punched, kicked, tripped up, hit with pool cues. Something like that happens on a daily basis.”
G4S said no officer has ever been stabbed at the prison and the officer in the incident described only received superficial injuries.
HMP Five Wells is a smart prison – but footage shows prisoners using phones and taking drugs
Dubbed a smart-prison, HMP Five Wells is the government’s solution to the antiquated Victorian prison estate, such as Wandsworth, from where recently an inmate escaped.
It was built between 2019 and 2021 on 36 acres of land near to the town of Wellingborough, at a cost of £253m.
At full capacity it can hold 1,680 prisoners. It has X shape blocks with wider, shorter corridors, which are supposedly easier to control with ultra-secure windows designed to keep out drugs and illegal phones.
HMP Five Bells is a ‘smart prison’
Videos online appear to show parties inside the prison. Pic: Andy Portch
But recently prisoners have posted images from their cells onto social media using contraband mobile phones where they seem to be gathered drinking alcohol and smoking drugs. One film seems to show alcohol being distilled.
Another, posted to YouTube, shows a prisoner on the roof, and there’s one of a fight in a cell. But perhaps most illustrative of the problem facing staff is a video on TikTok showing a female prison officer receiving sexual taunts from men who are roaming around the corridor, and she appears to have no backup support.
Sally said understaffing is such a problem that it is common for only one female officer to be alone with 60 men on a landing, when there should be at least two members of staff keeping watch.
Prisoner-led initiatives are allowing drugs into the prison, officers claim
Both officers said a Prisoner Led Initiative (PLI) that gives prisoners bands that allow them privileges to move around the blocks is being offered to way too many inmates and abused by prisoners to shift drugs around the prison estate.
Harry said: “Officers are afraid to challenge them because they will just flash their band and say ‘I can go there. I have access to these areas’.”
Sally said: “The peer led initiative when I first started was good – but now they just give bands to any prisoner, willy-nilly, and you’ve got the ‘bands people’ taking other prisoners from other units out of the blocks to sell stuff in the drugs unit.
“And someone with a band will say: ‘I can take him here. He’s with me.’ So, this is how drugs and contraband are getting passed through (the prison).”
Pic: Andy Portch
Both Harry and Sally said there are more illegal drugs in the drug rehabilitation area than any other part of the prison, and it’s the band system that is facilitating this free flow.
An Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) report published last month also found “PLI prisoners attending the (drug rehab) unit to support prisoners who were the supply line for drugs”.
The board said in regard to prisoners given these privileges there were “serious concerns by prisoners and staff about the methods of recruitment, selection, management and supervision of certain individuals”.
It added: “The board is concerned about the number and range of illicit items found in the prison. Drugs seem to be available on most houseblocks.”
Pic: Andy Portch
‘Staff turnover is absolutely ludicrous’
The whistleblowers say another problem is the high number of new, young recruits into the prison service often fresh out of college. The IMB report again backs this up. It found the number of inexperienced staff in HMP Five Wells was “a major concern”, and even some of the prisoners had complained about it.
The board’s chair, David Culwick, said: “Difficulties in recruiting and retaining staff has hindered the development of Five Wells.”
The report said: “A high proportion of operational staff have less than one year’s service and staff shortages mean they have little support.”
Harry said out of 17 people he trained with, only two remain. “Staff turnover is absolutely ludicrous. There’s a lot of members of staff that have absolutely no prison experience. They lack confidence. So, for the prisoners they have free reign.”
Pic: Andy Portch
The whistleblowers believe it is often corrupt members of staff bringing in the drugs.
A third officer we spoke to, who we will call Jane, left her job at the prison because she didn’t feel safe.
She said staff are not searched nearly enough. “I would say everyday (a search) should be imperative. Sometimes you go weeks, three weeks, four weeks. But that was just mainly in the mornings, the night times you would never, never get searched.”
The IMB report also supports this. It stated: “Most searches are between 6am and 8am (when staff arrive) but do not appear to take place at other times of the day.”
Jane blames poor management of the prison. “It was blatantly obvious that the senior management just didn’t care at all about the welfare of the staff. Number one, your biggest asset is your staff.”
There are ‘corrupt staff’ within in the service
All three whistleblowers agreed there are corrupt staff within the service. Both Harry and Sally said they haven’t been searched for about six weeks.
Pic: Andy Portch
Sally believes some officers have been encouraged to apply for their jobs by prisoners because, on top of their salary, they can earn good money bringing contraband items into the jail. She said: “I do believe some staff have been placed in there by prisoners because it’s easy to get a job in there.”
Last week the Prison Officers Association warned that organised crime groups were sending associates to train as prison officers for the “sole purpose” of smuggling drugs and phones into the jail.
G4S said staff are subject to government vetting checks prior to beginning their work with prisoners. And Five Wells has a counter-corruption strategy.
The three officers’ main concern is the safety of them and their colleagues. Harry said at the end of each day he is relieved that he has “managed to get out without injury”.
Sally said she is afraid for her life because each day “you don’t know what’s going to go in your back”.
For all the state-of-the-art security at HMP Five Wells the people charged with running it don’t feel safe.
G4S told Sky News that staff have adequate bodycams, radios and alarm buttons that can be pressed for assistance.
It said in September an officer received a single minor superficial injury to his temple and two to his back, but the officer was not stabbed.
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A spokesperson added: “The safety of staff and prisoners is our number one priority, and we do not tolerate violence.
“Managers take swift and robust action when serious incidents do happen. Such incidents are then referred to the police to support further prosecution.
“We have sufficient levels of staffing to run a stable, consistent and safe regime. We continue to drive recruitment to increase our staffing numbers which will enable us to broaden our current prison regime.
“The majority of our employees have more than 12 months’ prison experience and we have a large group of officers on secondment from other G4S prisons, providing additional support and experience. We are further increasing the number of First Line Managers to provide additional guidance and to mentor newly recruited staff.
“HMP Five Wells staff are proud of the good work that has been carried out since opening to support and develop employees and to help prisoners turn their lives around. We know there is more to be done and continue to take steps to improve the regime every day.
“Our dedicated officers work tirelessly to detect, intercept and confiscate contraband through a range of measures including the use of patrol and drug detection dogs, joint operations with Northamptonshire Police and HMPPS counter-corruption colleagues.
“We understand that working in a prison is a very rewarding vocation but can also be challenging and we are committed to supporting and caring for our staff.”
The Ministry of Justice chose not to comment.
UK
Urgent letter to home secretary over violence against women and girls strategy – as it omits child abuse
Ten child protection organisations have written an urgent letter to the home secretary expressing concern about the omission of child sexual abuse from the government’s violence against women and girls strategy, following a Sky News report.
Groups including the NSPCC, Barnardo’s and The Children’s Society wrote to Yvette Cooper to say that violence against women and girls (VAWG) and child sexual abuse are “inherently and deeply connected”, suggesting any “serious strategy” to address VAWG needs to focus on child sexual abuse and exploitation.
The letter comes after Sky News revealed an internal Home Office document, titled Our draft definition of VAWG, which said that child sexual abuse and exploitation is not “explicitly within the scope” of their strategy, due to be published in September.
Poppy Eyre when she was four years old
Responding to Sky News’ original report, Poppy Eyre, who was sexually abused and raped by her grandfather when she was four, said: “VAWG is – violence against women and girls. If you take child sexual abuse out of it, where are the girls?”
The Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse, which is funded by the Home Office and a signatory to the letter, estimates 500,000 children in England and Wales are sexually abused every year.
The NSPCC “welcome” the government’s pledge to halve VAWG in a decade, but is “worried that if they are going to fulfil this commitment, the strategy absolutely has to include clear deliverable objectives to combat child sexual abuse and exploitation too”, the head of policy, Anna Edmundson, told Sky News.
Poppy is a survivor of child sexual abuse
She warned the government “will miss a golden opportunity” and the needs of thousands of girls will be “overlooked” if child sexual abuse and exploitation is not “at the heart of its flagship strategy”.
The government insists the VAWG programme will include action to tackle child sexual abuse, but says it also wants to create a distinctive plan to “ensure those crimes get the specialist response they demand”.
“My message to the government is that if you’re going to make child sexual abuse a separate thing, we need it now,” Poppy told Sky News.
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Rape Crisis, which is one of the largest organisations providing support to women in England and Wales, shares these concerns.
It wants plans to tackle child sexual abuse to be part of the strategy, and not to sit outside it.
“If a violence against women and girls strategy doesn’t include sexual violence towards girls, then it runs the risk of being a strategy for addressing some violence towards some females, but not all,” chief executive Ciara Bergman said.
A Home Office spokesperson said the government is “working tirelessly to tackle the appalling crimes of violence against women and girls and child sexual exploitation and abuse, as part of our Safer Streets mission”.
“We are already investing in new programmes and introducing landmark laws to overhaul the policing and criminal justice response to these crimes, as well as acting on the recommendations of Baroness Casey’s review into group-based Child Sexual Exploitation, and the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse,” they added.
UK
Man and boy arrested on suspicion of arson after restaurant fire leaves two in critical condition
A 54-year-old man and a 15-year-old boy have been arrested on suspicion of arson with intent to endanger life after a restaurant fire in east London on Friday.
Three people were taken to hospital in a life-threatening condition after the fire at the Indian Aroma in Ilford.
Two remained in a critical condition on Sunday morning, according to the Metropolitan Police.
The restaurant suffered extensive damage in the blaze.
Two further victims are thought to have left the scene before officers arrived, Scotland Yard said.
Woodford Avenue from above. Pic: UK News and Pictures
Police are still trying to identify them.
CCTV footage seen by the PA news agency appears to show a group of people wearing face coverings walk into the restaurant and pour liquid on the floor.
Seconds later, the inside of the restaurant is engulfed in flames.
“While we have made two arrests, our investigation continues at pace so we can piece together what happened on Friday evening,” said the Met Police’s DCI Mark Rogers.
“I know the community [is] concerned and shocked by this incident.
The moment the fire broke out.
“I would urge anyone with any information or concerns to come forward and speak to police.”
Hospital porter Edward Thawe went to help after hearing screams from his nearby home.
He described the scene as “horrible” and “more than scary and the sort of thing that you don’t want to look at twice.”
He said: “I heard screaming and people saying they had called the police.”
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The 43-year-old said he saw a woman and a severely burned man who may have been customers.
Another witness, who did not want to be named, said he saw three “severely burned” people being doused by the emergency services and given oxygen.
“I can only imagine the pain they were going through,” he said.
On Saturday, the London Ambulance Service told Sky News: “We sent resources to the scene, including ambulance crews, an advanced paramedic, an incident response officer and paramedics from our hazardous area response team.
“We treated five people for burns and smoke inhalation. We took two patients to a major trauma centre and three others to local hospitals.”
The police investigation is continuing.
UK
Fast-track asylum appeals process to be introduced – as average time for decisions is more than one year
A new fast-track asylum appeals process will be introduced to speed up the process of deporting people without a right to remain in the UK, the home secretary has said.
As it currently takes, on average, more than a year to reach a decision on asylum appeals, the government plans to set up a new independent panel focused on asylum appeals to help reduce the backlog.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said “completely unacceptable” delays in the appeals process left failed asylum seekers in the system for years.
There are about 51,000 asylum appeals waiting to be heard.
The new independent body will use professionally-trained adjudicators, rather than relying on judges.
Ministers are introducing a new 24-week deadline for the first-tier tribunal to determine asylum appeals by those receiving accommodation support and appeals by foreign offenders.
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But they believe the current tribunal system, which covers a wide range of different cases, is still failing to ensure failed asylum seekers can be returned as swiftly as possible, nor can it accommodate a fast-track system for safe countries.
It comes amid protests about the use of hotel accommodation for migrants.
The home secretary said the overhaul would result in a system which is “swift, fair and independent, with high standards in place”.
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She said: “We inherited an asylum system in complete chaos with a soaring backlog of asylum cases and a broken appeals system with thousands of people in the system for years on end.
“That is why we are taking practical steps to fix the foundations and restore control and order to the system.
“We are determined to substantially reduce the number of people in the asylum system as part of our plan to end asylum hotels.
“Already since the election, we have reduced the backlog of people waiting for initial decisions by 24% and increased failed asylum returns by 30%.
“But we cannot carry on with these completely unacceptable delays in appeals as a result of the system we have inherited which mean that failed asylum seekers stay in the system for years on end at huge cost to the taxpayer.”
Official figures released earlier this month showed a total of 111,084 people applied for asylum in the UK in the year to June 2025, the highest number for any 12-month period since current records began in 2001.
‘Waving immigrants through even faster will not fix the problem’
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said: “I think this goes nowhere near far enough.
“The underlying rights, which allows most illegal immigrants to stay here, are not changing. Simply waving illegal immigrants through even faster to full housing and welfare rights will not fix the problem.”
Chris Philp
He added: “Immigration judges will still apply ever expanding common-sense defying definitions of ECHR rights to allow foreign criminals and illegal immigrants to stay here.”
But the Liberal Democrats have been more positive in their response, with shadow attorney general, Ben Maguire, saying: “A faster application process would mean that those with no right to be here are sent back swiftly and those who do have a valid claim can get a job, integrate and contribute to the community.”
Asked for his thoughts on the policy, immigration lawyer Harjap Singh Bhangal told Sky News that it “definitely sounds like some sort of solution”.
He pointed that the backlog of asylum seekers waiting for a decision is “huge”, around 51,000 people – and that during this time, they are not allowed to work.
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A new fast-track asylum appeals process will be introduced to speed up the process of deporting people without a right to remain in the UK.
He said: “The equivalent would be saying that imagine if A-level students this year sat the exams and were told ‘well, hold on, you’re not going to get your results for two years’ time. But in the meantime, you can’t go to university.’
“You’d have mayhem, and it’d be pandemonium in the street. You’d have broken people idle with nothing to do. Essentially, this is what’s happening to asylum seekers.”
He added that one of the reasons it takes so long for cases to be heard is because asylum seekers have to represent themselves in court, which can mean upwards of half a day is spent translating and explaining everything to them.
Mr Bhangal also said the immigration system is “broken”, because “they take ages to make a decision which could be made in one week”.
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