Decision Report 201400340

Summary

Mr C, who is a prisoner, complained to the prison several times because he said they did not give him enough time to eat lunch before the exercise period. He said that because of new arrangements exercise was being called much earlier from Monday to Thursday, which meant prisoners were not being given enough time to eat.

In response to Mr C's complaints, the prison accepted that staff had, at times, called for the exercise period too early. They apologised to Mr C and issued a notice to staff confirming that the afternoon exercise period should not be called for before 13:00. They also confirmed that this would be monitored to ensure staff were complying with the instruction.

The evidence we saw confirmed the prison had provided several assurances to Mr C that they were taking a number of steps to prevent this exercise period from being called too early. However, we also found that Mr C had continued to submit complaints because the instruction was being ignored. We upheld his complaint, as it was clear that the prison had failed to effectively resolve the problem, which they themselves had accepted.

Recommendations

We recommended that the Scottish Prison Service:

• provide us with evidence of the monitoring they say has been carried out; and
• confirm what actions will be taken to effectively resolve Mr C's complaint.