What happened
Oakhill Secure Training Centre in Milton Keynes, run by G4S, holds around 70 children, some as young as 12. Ofsted, the Care Quality Commission and HM Inspectorate of Prisons inspected it from 21 to 25 July 2025 and found a palpable change in culture since the last inspection, serious and systemic failures, and safeguarding systems in disarray. The centre was no longer child-centred, they reported, and staff conduct was of significant concern.
Twenty-three staff had been suspended between November 2024 and 13 July 2025, sixteen over allegations about their conduct with children. Seven more were suspended after 14 July for the same reason. The centre director and one deputy were suspended, the other deputy had been dismissed, and their replacements had little time to act.
Children reported unintentional pain during physical restraint, and lengthy separation, sometimes for days. In the inspectors’ survey, 30 per cent of children reported verbal abuse by staff and 12 per cent reported physical assault by staff. Youth Custody Service monitors had failed to act on safeguarding concerns.
The outcome
On 31 July 2025 the three inspectorates issued an urgent notification to the Secretary of State for Justice, who had 28 days to respond with an action plan.
No prosecution is recorded. The Howard League for Penal Reform has issued legal proceedings about a separation policy at the centre.
What went wrong
Restraint that hurts a child in ways nobody intended is not a technique problem on its own. It arrived alongside sixteen suspensions over staff conduct with children, seven more after the inspection began, and a leadership team with nobody left in post. Inspectors were describing conditions, not a hold.
The monitors meant to catch it had concerns and did not act. Nothing corrected the centre until the inspectorates arrived.
What it teaches
Before you teach a hold, ask what conditions it will be used in. Pain in restraint is often the signature of a culture. Where staff are unsupervised, where managers do not challenge, where monitoring sees and does not act, a hold will be used harder and longer than the situation needs. Training cannot outrun that.
The second lesson is that the warning was already written down. An urgent notification in 2021, no inspection outcome above requires improvement since 2017, an inadequate judgment in October 2024, then another urgent notification in 2025: the centre did not improve between inspections.
Questions for the room
- Thirty per cent of children reported verbal abuse and 12 per cent physical assault by staff. What would those figures look like in your setting, and how would you know?
- A child is separated for days. At what point does that stop being separation for safety and become something else, and who is checking?
- Your monitoring body had concerns and did not act. What does it need to act?
Evidence and limits
Confidence: confirmed, on the joint inspectorates’ urgent notification of 31 July 2025, which was read and is quoted. The full inspection report had not been published when the notification was issued, so what inspectors saw inside the centre is thinner here than a report would give.
The Howard League’s response returned an access error and was not read; its legal proceedings are carried from the vault record, without detail.
No member of staff is named. Suspensions are allegations, not findings, and this page makes no finding about any individual. The 30 per cent and 12 per cent figures come from the inspectors’ survey of children, as the notification reports them.
Our physical interventions training covers restraint technique and the supervision that has to sit around it.
Sources
- Ofsted, Care Quality Commission and HM Inspectorate of Prisons, urgent notification for Oakhill Secure Training Centre, GOV.UK, 31 July 2025
- The Howard League for Penal Reform, response to the urgent notification, 31 July 2025 (not retrieved)
Reviewed 20 October 2026.