inuous organisational change.
There is also a more encouraging Welsh finding. An August inspection of public protection in Wales identified clear ambition, strong leadership and a coherent vision for improvement. That is a positive assessment of direction, although it should not be read as evidence that all service difficulties have been resolved.
One of the clearest unresolved funding questions concerns the proposed Swansea Residential Women’s Centre.
In September correspondence with a Senedd committee, the UK prisons minister confirmed that the centre had not received funding from the last Spending Review. The UK Government was considering how the model fitted its current priorities and the changing profile of women in custody.
The report does not describe the project as cancelled. It does, however, leave its delivery uncertain, despite the Welsh Government’s stated commitment to reducing the disproportionate impact of the justice system on women in Wales.
Prison safety remains another major concern. Earlier in the year, the House of Commons Welsh Affairs Committee recommended pausing the planned expansion of HMP Parc because of the scale of failings exposed in 2024.
The UK Government responded that additional capacity would not be activated unless it was satisfied that the prison’s stability and safety would be protected. The central question is therefore what evidence will be required to provide that assurance.
Across England and Wales, prison inspectors have also highlighted the threat posed by illicit drugs. A separate independent review of the prison system is due to report by December 2026.
Access to justice extends beyond prisons and policing. The monitoring report highlights a Commons Justice Committee warning that declining availability of legal aid has severely eroded access to justice across England and Wales.
That finding concerns the ability to obtain advice and representation when people need to understand or enforce their rights. The monitoring report does not provide a separate Welsh measure of the scale of that problem, an important limitation when assessing local provision.
For victims, the report records plans to extend specialist rape and serious sexual offence courtrooms across every Crown Court in England and Wales, alongside a commitment to dedicated police investigation teams by the end of 2027.
Those announcements sit beside the Victims’ Commissioner’s warning that revising the Victims’ Code will require wider reform, stronger accountability and cultural change to deliver meaningful improvements.
The coming months offer several opportunities to test progress: the proposed probation agreement, the planned expansion of Wales’s youth justice role and the prison system review.
For people using the system, the measure of success will be practical: accessible advice, effective support for victims, safer prisons and services that help prevent further harm. The monitoring report sets out the commitments. Scrutiny now needs to establish which are funded, which are being delivered and what difference they make.
You can read the full report here.
