Manchester inspection report 2026

Summary

When we inspected Manchester in 2024 the jail was in an appalling state. The combination of drugs, violence, an inexperienced and demotivated staff team, and a very poor regime, meant the prison was failing in many of its most basic functions. I therefore decided to invoke the Urgent Notification protocol. To give the prison time to address these many problems, we decided to conduct an announced inspection, with six months’ notice, more than 15 months after the last visit. On this inspection, we found leaders had begun to make some progress in critical areas. However, in our healthy prison tests, the scores of ‘poor’ for safety and purposeful activity, and ‘reasonably good’ for preparation for release, remained unchanged.

Inspection ratings