HMP Coldingley prisoners ‘throw human waste out of cell windows’

Prison inmates have been resorting to throwing human waste out of their cell windows because of a lack of toilets, a report has found.

The Independent Monitoring Board said it was “appalled at the lack of in-cell sanitation” at Surrey’s HMP Coldingley.

It said prisoners were forced to use buckets in their cells at night and some would “inevitably… dispose of human waste via cell windows”.

The Ministry of Justice has pledged to “address this long-standing issue”.

More than 350 men live in cells without lavatories or sinks at the Category C prison near Bisley, the report said.

‘Impossible to keep clean’

HMP Coldingley was one of six institutions named as a “reform prison” in 2016, with governors granted extra powers in what the government called the “biggest shake-up of the prisons system since the Victorian era”.

It came alongside a commitment to spend £1.3bn to “replace decrepit, ageing prisons with modern establishments”.

Heather Cook, chair of the monitoring board at Coldingley, said the prison’s biggest problem continued to be the “poor state” of four wings built in 1969, which were “almost impossible to keep clean”.

The board’s report said the “night sanitation arrangement” at the jail was “degrading and totally unsatisfactory”.

At night, inmates had to press a buzzer and join a queue to be let out of their cell to use communal toilets.

The report said queues could be long and a prisoner’s “only other option is to use a pot in his cell and then to ‘slop out’ in the morning”.

Frances Crook, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said the problem stemmed from prisoners being locked in their cells during the day and “sleeping through their sentences”, meaning they were more likely to be awake at night, needing the toilet.

Former Justice Secretary David Gauke said in February the government had “made funding available for major structural work which will address this long-standing issue”.

The Independent Monitoring Board said it “remains to be seen when this essential work will be undertaken”.