Wayland inspection report 2022
Report for Wayland Prison
Summary
HMP Wayland is a category C training prison near Thetford in Norfolk that held 890 prisoners when we inspected in April this year. The remote location on an old RAF base on the edge of Thetford forest has made the recruitment of staff very difficult and at the time of the inspection there were not enough officers to run anything like a proper category C regime. Standards of behaviour in the under-staffed prison had slipped and inspectors often saw prisoners breaking the rules without challenge or adequate supervision from officers, many of whom had only recently begun working in the jail. With experienced prisoners and inexperienced staff, there is a real risk that things could get much worse. The new governor, who had taken over at the end of 2021, had begun to address some of the worst behaviour, sending some of the most troubled prisoners back to category B prisons and aiming to improve the support for newer officers. The staff team appreciated her visibility around the jail and her priorities were generally well understood.