- Prison healthcare
HMP YOI Deerbolt
Assessment report published 21 September 2026
Contents
Judgements
Our view of the service
HMP YOI Deerbolt is a Category C, male adult training prison. The prison is located in Barnard Castle, County Durham. The healthcare services are provided by Spectrum Community Healthcare C.I.C. (Spectrum).
We carried out a joint inspection with His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) in December 2024, where we found the quality of primary healthcare, medicines and staffing needed improvement. We issued action plan requests in relation to breaches of regulations relating to safe care and treatment, governance and staffing. We followed up these concerns as part of a joint independent review of progress with HMIP in October 2025; the provider had made some improvements, however there was more work to be done. A further action plan request was then issued in relation to governance.
The purpose of this focused assessment was to determine if the provider was now meeting the legal requirements of the relevant regulations. This was carried out alongside a joint inspection with HMIP in August 2026. At this assessment, we assessed 2 quality statements in the safe and well-led key questions. We found the provider had made the required improvements.
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.
Improvements had been made to incident reporting and oversight. Incidents were reviewed during the daily safety huddle which enabled managers to check that staff had appropriately reported them. There was better oversight of trends and themes in incidents being reported locally, which was reported to the provider. Investigations were allocated for investigation and dealt with in a timely manner, with any learning shared with the staff team.
Records relating to additional training completed by staff were now in place. There was a clear structure in place for governance and oversight meetings which were held regularly. These included medicines management and clinical governance meetings.