HM Prison Berwyn (; ) is a £250 million Category C adult male

prison A prison, also known as a jail, gaol, penitentiary, detention center, correction center, correctional facility, or remand center, is a facility where Prisoner, people are Imprisonment, imprisoned under the authority of the State (polity), state ...

Wrexham County Borough Wrexham County Borough () is a Principal areas of Wales, county borough, with city status in the United Kingdom, city status, in the North East Wales, north-east of Wales. It borders the English ceremonial counties of Cheshire and Shropshire to ...

, Wales. It is the largest prison in the UK, opened in 2017, and is operated by

His Majesty's Prison Service His Majesty's Prison Service (HMPS) is a part of HM Prison and Probation Service (formerly the National Offender Management Service), which is the part of His Majesty's Government charged with managing most of the prisons within England and ...

Name

The prison's name was announced by then-Governor Russ Trent on 17 February 2016. The name ''Berwyn'' comes from the elements of

Middle Welsh Middle Welsh (, ) is the label attached to the Welsh language of the 12th to 15th centuries, of which much more remains than for any earlier period. This form of Welsh developed directly from Old Welsh (). Literature and history Middle Welsh is ...

''barr'' (summit, peak) and ''gwyn'' (white). A spokesperson for the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) said that the prison had been named after the Welsh mountain range. The original shortlist of six names was: ''Bridgeway'', ''Marcher'', ''Cerrig Tân'', ''Dee Vale'', ''Whittlesham'' and ''Y Berwyn''. These names were suggested by local schools, communities and historical societies.

Structure

The prison is split into three houses, the first, Bala opening in February 2017 and the other two, Alwen and Ceiriog in the autumn. Each section can hold different communities including one for armed forces veterans.

Operation

It was designed to house 2100 men and to be the cheapest to run Category C prison in the country, with a projected cost of £14,000 per inmate. However as of 2019, it is still incomplete, only 60% full and costs £36,000 per prisoner each year.

Enforced cell sharing

The prison was planned to be at 75% capacity by the end of 2017 but in June 2018, 16 months after opening, the prison was still only half full. It has been suggested that this is due to the contentious design of the prison, which requires a high proportion of prisoners to share cells, to cut costs. Prior to the design of Berwyn, the Prison Service worked on the basis that one person to a cell was the norm. In 2023,

Liz Saville Roberts Elizabeth Saville Roberts (; born 16 December 1964) is a Welsh Plaid Cymru politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Dwyfor Meirionnydd since 2015. She has served as the group leader of Plaid Cymru in the House of Commons si ...

Plaid Cymru Plaid Cymru ( ; , ; officially Plaid Cymru – the Party of Wales, and often referred to simply as Plaid) is a centre-left, Welsh nationalist list of political parties in Wales, political party in Wales, committed to Welsh independence from th ...

MP, raised concerns about the prison, stating it had almost surpassed the 2,000 cell capacity for the first time since operating. She also claimed many cells had been trashed and not repaired, putting them out of usage.

Controversies

The 'Bala controversy'

In 2017, residents of the town Bala in

Gwynedd Gwynedd () is a county in the north-west of Wales. It borders Anglesey across the Menai Strait to the north, Conwy, Denbighshire, and Powys to the east, Ceredigion over the Dyfi estuary to the south, and the Irish Sea to the west. The ci ...

were angered by the use of their town's name for one of the prison's houses, with a petition being started, to get the name changed. The petition received over 400 signatures.

Suspension of Governor

The first governor, Russ Trent who had also served as project director, was suspended on 21 August 2018 following unspecified allegations. He returned to work after the investigation concluded with no action taken by the Prison Service. Nick Leader assumed the role of Governor in April 2019.

Three guards jailed for affairs with inmates

In January 2023, it was revealed that three female guards at the prison had been jailed in the preceding three years for having illegal affairs with inmates. In March, a Freedom of Information request found that 18 female members of staff were either suspected of having, or did have, inappropriate relationships with inmates.

References

{{Wrexham Prisons in Wrexham County Borough 2017 establishments in Wales Berwyn