Prison officers warned after drinking in pub on lunch break at HMP Winchester

Officers working at Winchester Prison were pictured enjoying themselves in the pub next door before heading back on shift last week.

Eight to nine staff members, ‘including at least one supervising officer in uniform’, were pictured sitting in the County Arms pub, before walking back to work at lunchtime on June 15.

A formal complaint of unprofessional conduct seen by Metro.co.uk alleges they were ‘returning to duty after consuming alcohol’ at the Category B prison for men and young offenders in Hampshire. 

Photographs of the workers show beer on the table and in some of the images, staff stare directly at the camera and wave. They were then seen returning to the prison and going back into a security-controlled area. 

Former magistrate Georgia Swift took the photos after fearing previous concerns she raised about prison conditions had not been taken seriously. She resigned her role in the courts service after her partner was remanded at the prison last year, in order to support him and advocate on his behalf. 

After his release earlier this month, they returned to collect belongings which they say have still not all been returned, and stopped at the pub for lunch, where they noticed staff were sitting outside so chose to sit away from them inside. 

‘As we ordered our food at the bar two more officers came in, stood next to us and ordered a pint of Guinness and pint of lager,’  her formal complaint to Governor Bourke says. ‘Looking through the window we saw that the officers had pints of lager they were drinking. 

‘My partner was concerned, having a good sense of the timings within the prison, and believed that these officers were likely to return to duty. 

She claimed one bartender confirmed staff had bought alcohol as well as others ordering Coca-Cola, and another told them ‘it happens all the time’. 

When they then returned to the prison at the same time, she alleged one of the officers commented ‘What the f*ck, I was good to you in there’, and ‘You’ve done that and now you want our help’.

The complaint continues: ‘These officers consumed alcohol before returning to work in an establishment that clearly had a “Heightened” security level sign displayed, where both vulnerable and aggressive men are held in confined, poor conditions, where drugs are readily available to the men all of which contribute to making behaviour unpredictable and the need to restrain a reality.

‘It is utterly incomprehensible that these professionals employed to uphold the values of His Majesty’s Prisons consider it appropriate to consume alcohol before returning to duty.’

A Prison Service spokesperson said: ‘We have investigated this incident and staff received a verbal warning, reminding them of the high standards expected of them at all times.’

Georgia’s partner, a recovering heroin addict held in the prison for six months until his release in June, who Metro.co.uk has agreed not to name to support his recovery, told how ‘certain times [staff] come back in and you can smell they’ve had a drink’. 

He added: ‘They say, “Oh it’s because I went to the pub for lunch and someone next to me was drinking”, or someone spilled it. But it’s not like fag smoke; it doesn’t move around the room and stick to you.’

In many other jobs, workers are explicitly prohibited from drinking alcohol during the working day. For example, NHS workers are typically told that ‘alcohol consumption during meal breaks and before coming on duty is not permitted’ due to ‘a perceived link between the smell of alcohol on the breath of staff and incompetence’ .

It would also be a disciplinary issue for a police officer to buy or drink alcohol while in uniform, as doing so could ‘discredit the police service’, according to the Police Staff Council’s Standards of Professional Behaviour.

Metro.co.uk spoke to another recent Winchester inmate, William Bruce, 63, who was released last month after pleading guilty to beating a man with a motorcycle crash helmet having served seven months on remand. 

He claimed that morale among staff was extremely low, with some ‘really good’ officers struggling to make a difference in the poor conditions and working culture: ‘Disheartened is not the word.’

He told of chaotic scenes where it was normal for inmates to need resuscitation after self harm.

‘People were cutting their own throats, hanging themselves, setting themselves on fire, everything,’ he claimed. ‘Every day there was something. No wonder people are dying in there and a lot more will die.’

Ministry of Justice statistics shows that 311 people in prison died in 2023 in England and Wales, including 93 deaths which were ‘self-inflicted’, an increase of 22% on the previous year.

Bruce claimed that use of the drug Spice in Winchester was so rife that inmates would be seen laying on the ground while high ‘and people just walk past them’, while the fire alarms would regularly go off from people smoking in cells, saying he was shocked at the decline in the state of the prison estate having last been inside 25 years ago.

In 2005, the prison service’s director of personnel Gareth Hadley announced plans to alcohol test prison staff, telling Personnel Today: ‘Basically, alcohol and prisons don’t mix. When you are dealing with dysfunctional people, it has severe implications for order and control.’  

Current rules state that staff must not have breath alcohol levels that exceed the current legal drink/drive limits while on duty.

The Prison Service did not respond when asked if there was any express prohibition on staff drinking alcohol in the pub during their breaks.

Winchester Prison was singled out as having poor conditions in a national report in May by the Independent Monitoring Boards (IMB), which told how one inmate had even managed to tunnel through the wall of his cell using plastic cutlery from the canteen. 

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