The Government has had to pay out almost a quarter of a million pounds of taxpayers’ money in compensation to staff at Bristol’s biggest prison for injuries sustained at work in the past five years, new figures can reveal.
Prison staff at HMP Bristol received the highest amount from injury claims in the past year than ever before, with the number one reason being injuries sustained in attacks by prisoners or in subduing inmates.
The figures, obtained by no-win-no-fee law firm Accident Claims under the Freedom of Information Act, revealed that in the most recent year – 2023-24 – the Ministry of Justice settled claims with staff at the Horfield prison that totalled £69,411. That was a 58 per cent jump on the previous year, 2022-23, when claims totalling £43,827 were paid out. The most recent figure was also fractionally higher than the post-Covid year in 2021-22, when record amounts of money were paid out to staff in injury claims as a pandemic backlog was cleared.
The total over the past five years since 2019 is £241,699 – a figure that has contributed to a total of millions of pounds paid out to injured prison officers across the country.
Prison officers receive compensation or damages from the MoJ only if the injury they sustained could or should have been prevented with better protection, procedures or systems. Nationally, the number one reason a prison officer makes a claim is because they have been injured in an assault by a prisoner – since 2019 that accounted for 637 claims in the UK.
A total of 344 prison officers also claimed compensation from slips, trips and falls, while 249 made claims for injuries received during control and restraint procedures, 53 from being struck by an object, and just 33 for stress. A total of 1,628 claims have been lodged against prisons across the UK in the last five years, 592 of which have been settled.
“Prison staff work in a harsh environment and are exposed to stressful situations almost every day,” said a spokesperson for Accident Claims. “Despite prisons having processes designed to minimise the risk of injury to prison officers whilst they are at work, there are times when these processes fail, and an accident or even an assault takes place.
Read more: Bristol Live’s reporting on HMP Bristol
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“The prison population has increased annually for the last 30 years, rising from 43,000 in 1994 to over 88,000 in 2024,” they added. “Despite this, the number of uniformed officers employed to care for and protect those committed by the Courts has remained almost static.
“This imbalance in staff numbers has resulted in disturbing figures as, according to the Ministry of Justice, there were 114 assaults on prison staff per 1,000 prisoners in 2023/24. Additionally, prisoner-on-staff assaults continue at a rate of over eight per day every day of the year,” they said.
“The UK government launched Operation Early Dawn in August 2024, an ‘early release scheme’ for prisons across England and Wales, as the total prison population reached an all-time high. On September 10, around 1,700 convicts walked out of prison in England and Wales after serving 40% of their sentence. The increased prison population levels were often not matched by an increase in the number of prison staff, which has led to more pressure being piled on officers, such as the threat of more prisoner-on-guard assaults,” they added.
HMP Bristol has been in and out of ‘special measures’ twice in the past few years, after inspectors found it needed serious improvement because of a range of issues, from overcrowding, poor facilities in the historic, Victorian parts of the jail, staff shortages, violence, and issues with drugs being smuggled in – often over the walls from the surrounding streets of Horfield.
“Prison staff face a unique and challenging environment daily,” Lucy Parker, a solicitor from JF Law, said. “When they are injured due to negligence, whether it’s an assault by an inmate, a slip and fall, or inadequate safety measures, they have the right to seek compensation. It’s crucial for prison staff to understand their legal rights and seek professional legal advice to ensure their claim is handled fairly.”