Updated 30 August 2024
HMP & YOI Styal is a women’s prison located in Cheshire and operated by His Majesty’s Prison Service. It holds up to 450 women. It is a busy prison with a high turnover of prisoners and a short average length of stay. The prison population includes those on remand, sentenced prisoners, recalled prisoners, and pregnant women. Spectrum Community Health C.I.C. (Spectrum) provides primary healthcare, substance misuse services and social care at the prison. These services have interdependencies with other health care services provided at the prison including mental health care, perinatal care and dentistry. Spectrum is registered with CQC to provide the regulated activities of diagnostic and screening procedures, treatment of disease, disorder, or injury and family planning services. We carried out an announced focused assessment of healthcare services provided by Spectrum at HMP & YOI Styal to follow up on the Warning Notices issued after our previous inspection in April 2024 (see https://api.cqc.org.uk/public/v1/reports/027201ca-efa8-46ad-acd2-897bb9057b3e?20240715110036) . We also looked at the areas we had said the provider should improve at our previous inspection. At this inspection, we found that improvements had been made in relation to the management of medicines, staffing levels, infection control and governance, and the provider was no longer in breach of the regulations. However, we found some areas that the provider should improve further. The inspection team was made up of 3 Health and Justice inspectors and a Pharmacist Specialist. We do not currently rate services provided in prisons. We highlight good practice and issues that service providers need to improve and take regulatory action as necessary.