NPM Bulletin – January 2026
Welcome
Welcome to the NPM’s first bulletin of 2026. We hope you all had a restful festive period and a positive start to the new year.
As we begin 2026, we would like to draw your attention to the recently re-organised Training Resources section of the UK NPM website. This page brings together a wide range of useful materials for everyone working within the NPM network, including the Induction Training video, several guidance documents, a new instructional video on the Reporting Dashboard, and the Central Team’s Briefings Series. These resources offer a helpful refresher for existing colleagues, and valuable introduction for colleagues new to the UK NPM.
As many of you will be aware, the UK NPM published its sixteenth Annual Report in December. The report was covered in The Times, Mental Capacity Law and Policy, Care Appointments, Morning Star and Lexis Nexis Legal News. We were really pleased to see such broad interest in the report this year, helping shine a brighter light on safeguarding in detention and bringing more people into the conversation.
Looking ahead, the start of 2026 will see the Central Team working on several important pieces of work. These include collaboration with the Independent Office for Police Conduct on their upcoming “Learning the Lessons” magazine issue, continued thematic work on welfare and social care and solitary confinement, and further investigation into deaths in custody and mental health transfers in Scotland, and personality disorder in Northern Ireland.
The Central Team would like to thank all NPM bodies for their continued engagement. This includes contributions to the recent survey on solitary confinement practices, as well as the submissions of self-evaluations, which are due by 30 January. In line with the 2025-26 Business Plan, the Central Team will shortly undertake its own self-evaluation.
We encourage you to share this bulletin with your staff, volunteers and any other interested colleagues, so they can stay up to date with the latest NPM news.
With best wishes,
Martin, Jane, Chelsea and Sarah
The UK NPM Central Team
National Subgroups
The NPM Scotland Subgroup’s next meeting will take place on 12 March 2026. The subgroup will also be hosting a panel event on 6 March to examine treatment and conditions in Scotland’s detention settings.
The Northern Ireland Subgroup sent a letter to the Chairs of the Committee for Health and the Committee for Justice, and to the Minister for Health and Minister for Justice, to outline concerns about the provision of community services to implement changes to the operation of bail and remand for young people in the Justice Bill. Following responses in January, the Subgroup will engage directly as the Bill goes through Committee stage. The Subgroup will welcome a work-based placement student in February who will support with research over the spring.
Blog: Strengthening the Rights of LGBTQI+ Detainees
New EU-wide research, led by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute, has shed light on the often-hidden experiences of LGBTQI+ people in detention. This month’s blog highlights the project’s key findings, including challenges and positive practices, and was created with support from Microsoft Copilot Generative AI, in line with UK Government AI policy.
Using the Reporting Dashboard
Did you know you can quickly turn any table on the Reporting Dashboard into a downloadable spreadsheet?
On both the Reporting Dashboard’s Recommendations and Reports pages you’ll find a small blue “Export” button at the top right of each table. Selecting this will instantly convert the information you are viewing into an Excel file, which you can save and use for your own work. You can also apply filters before exporting, creating a tailored spreadsheet containing only the records most relevant to your task, and allowing you to easily compile focused datasets.
This feature has already proved valuable in recent NPM work. Sarah regularly uses the Export function to download relevant records when drafting the monthly good practice papers, and has also used it to extract all recommendations related to isolation, supporting upcoming thematic work on solitary confinement.
For anyone who would like to learn more, Sarah has created a new instructional video, outlining the Reporting Dashboard’s functionality and walking you through some examples.
Please let us know how you are using the Dashboard by sending us an email.
Quarterly Analysis of the Reporting Dashboard
The second Quarterly Analysis reviews and analyses the data uploaded to the Dashboard between October and December (Q3) 2025, highlighting key concerning trends and themes of good practice across all settings. The paper also looks at how this data compares to the data in Q2. This will now become a quarterly publication.
Read the Quarterly Analysis for Q3 of 2025 on our website.
Good Practice: Connection to the outside world
This month’s Good Practice Paper gives an overview of good practice relating to social connection, visits and connection to the outside world, highlighting the important for detainee wellbeing and progression. The paper shares practical examples of good practice that could be adopted in other establishments or settings.
Spotlight reports from NPM bodies
HM Inspectorate of Prisons – Reading for Rehabilitation
This report notes that while a few prisons have started to build stronger reading cultures, these examples sit against a backdrop of long‑standing system-wide failures in reading provision. While earlier reviews in 2022–23 found serious failings in reading provision, 2025 visits showed that some prisons have significantly improved by prioritising literacy, expanding library use and embedding reading into daily regimes. Despite this progress, the report suggests that these improvements are uneven and far from universal.
Read here: Reading for Rehabilitation
Children’s Commissioner for England – Children living in illegal children’s homes
12 months after the Commissioner’s first investigation into illegal children’s homes, little has changed. The report finds that 669 children were living in illegal children’s homes in 2025, isolated, left without appropriate care, and often at increased risk of harm. These ‘homes’ include caravans, holiday rentals, or AirBnBs, usually under the ownership of private companies with no formal inspection or scrutiny.
Read here: Children living in illegal children’s homes
Latest news from NPM bodies
- CCE has published a new report on Children living in illegal children’s homes, which finds that hundreds of children in care are still being housed illegally by local authorities.
- CQC recently announced that it will continue to lead on the programme of Independent Care (Education) and Treatment Reviews, which aims to make sure that care and treatment for all autistic people and people with a learning disability who are in long-term segregation has an in-depth independent review
- HIW would like to thank everyone who took part in the public consultation for the upcoming strategy for 2026-2030. The feedback will help finalise a strategy that reflects what matters most to the people and shapes how HIW inspects and regulates healthcare in Wales. HIW will soon publish a summary of key themes, and the final version of the Strategy for 2026–2030 will be published on 1 April 2026.
- HMIP has published several inspection reports, and has issued an Urgent Notification for HMP Swaleside.
- HMIP has also published a thematic report on Reading for Rehabilitation, which follows reviews in 2022 and 2023 which identified serious deficiencies in the teaching of reading across the prison estate.
- HMIPS’ recent IPM Annual Monitoring Report highlights persistent and worsening issues across the prison estate, with overcrowding once again emerging as the most critical concern. Read the press release on the HMIPS website.
- The ICVS’s recent Independent Custody Visiting Report details that the majority of the 567 visits made in the reporting period were successful, with staff receiving positive comments. Issues were found in maintenance closures and dignity concerns.
- IMB has published several annual monitoring reports, and the National Chair has written to Minster Timpson regarding concerns over cuts to education budgets in prisons in England.
- MWCS has published multiple inspection reports, as well as its annual Children and Young People Monitoring Report 2024-25..
- Ofsted has published inspection reports on Marydale Lodge and Clare Lodge.
If we missed anything, or if you have a report, blog post or news story you would like to share in the next bulletin, please send us an email.
Upcoming events and activities
26 January 2026: NPM Steering Group Q3 meeting
5 February: NPM Artificial Intelligence Task and Finish Group meeting
6 March: Scotland Subgroup Thematic Seminar
10 March: Northern Ireland Subgroup meeting
12 March: Scotland Subgroup meeting
29 – 30 April 2026: UK NPM Annual Conference 2026, Manchester
External resources of interest
The Scottish Government has published its report of the 2025 Independent Review of Fatal Accident Inquiries relating to deaths in custody in Scotland. The Review has considered the efficiency, effectiveness and trauma-informed nature of Fatal Accident Inquiry system, and has also identified barriers that families faced in engaging with the process and the timescales involved.
The Prison Reform Trust has published a report on the importance of “hope and meaning” for those serving long sentences. Through 123 interviews, the report shows how years behind bars can lead to “dead time”, institutionalisation and a loss of belief that detainees matter. The report also sets out practical steps to help mitigate the harms of long-term imprisonment and support rehabilitation.
On 11 December, Italian NGO Antigone and Physicians for Human Rights Israel hosted a comprehensive webinar on “Ending Solitary Confinement”. This webinar also marked the official launch of their International Guiding Statement on alternatives to solitary confinement, which represents a pivotal step forward in upholding human dignity in detention. Watch the webinar online, and refer to the webinar programme to find out more about the panels.
Thank you for reading!
This bulletin is compiled each month by the NPM Central Team. If you have any news you would like to share, or would like to provide feedback, please get in touch.