Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent progress he has made on the installation of Automatic Fire Detection across prison accommodation.

Under this Government, H M Prison & Probation Service has adopted a strategic approach to fire safety improvement across the prison estate, prioritising the installation of in-cell automatic fire detection (AFD) to minimise the risk of harm from fires as quickly as possible. This approach, which has resulted in approximately 4000 prison places being made fire safety compliant since July 2024, reflects the assessment that AFD provides the most significant immediate reduction in life safety risk by enabling the earliest possible identification of fire.

The current number of prison places with in-cell AFD is 70,975 out of a total of 89,795 operational places across the prison estate (79 per cent).