Category A Prisons UK 2026: The High Security Prisons List

In shortThe eight high security prisons in England and Wales are the places people mean by Category A prisons.

When people search for "Category A prisons UK" they almost always mean the high security prisons for adult men in England and Wales.

The HMPPS Prison and Probation Jobs site names eight of them on its page about working in a long-term high security prison: HMP Belmarsh, HMP Frankland, HMP Full Sutton, HMP Long Lartin, HMP Manchester, HMP Wakefield, HMP Woodhill, HMP Whitemoor.

It says that to work in those you need Counter Terrorism Check (CTC) security clearance and must have been resident in the UK for the last three years. The same page names five further long-term high security prisons, Garth, Gartree, Isle of Wight, Lowdham Grange and Swaleside, as places with no CTC requirement listed.

We list establishments from the GOV.UK prison pages and HMPPS statistics, with the dataset last compiled on 2026-10-03. All figures below are marked with their source date.

• That jobs page is the closest thing to an official list, and it is written for people who might work there.
• It is not a legal list of where Category A prisoners are held, and you should not read it as saying every prisoner in those sites is Category A.
• HMPPS's categorisation instruction says confirmed Category A prisoners are held in a high security prison, and that a provisional Category A prisoner held elsewhere is moved to one.
• It does not say that every prisoner in those prisons is Category A, and prisoners of other categories can be held in the same establishment.

In shortCategory A is a prisoner category: someone whose escape would be highly dangerous, split into potential, provisional and confirmed.

The definition sits in PSI 09/2015, the HMPPS Prison Service Instruction on identifying and managing potential and provisional Category A and Restricted Status prisoners, re-issued on 11 August 2026.

It says a Category A prisoner is a prisoner whose escape would be highly dangerous to the public, or the police or the security of the State, and for whom the aim must be to make escape impossible.

The definition is about how dangerous the prisoner would be if he did escape, not how likely escape is, so a prisoner can be Category A even if he is not thought likely to try.

Potential Category A

Reported to the Category A Team in High Security Prisons Group and managed as Category A while a final decision is awaited; if held outside the high security estate, he normally stays where he is.

Provisional Category A

The Category A Team has decided that Category A status is warranted; if held outside the high security estate, he is moved to a high security prison.

Confirmed Category A

Held in a high security prison and deemed Category A at his first formal review, usually after conviction and sentence.

In shortLists differ because a prisoner category and a prison's functional group are two separate labels, so always say which definition you are using.

Lists of UK prisons by category mix two labelling systems.

The first is the security category of each prisoner: for adult men A, B, C or D. The second is the functional group HMPPS gives each prison when it publishes its annual performance ratings, such as Reception, Category C Trainer, Category B, High Security, Open and Female.

The two do not line up one to one, and our UK prisons list and prison categories guide explain the difference in full.

Only five of the eight, HMP Frankland, HMP Full Sutton, HMP Long Lartin, HMP Wakefield, HMP Whitemoor, carry the High Security functional group in the 2025/26 ratings.

Belmarsh is rated as a Reception prison, and Manchester and Woodhill as Category B. Yet all three are on the HMPPS jobs site's list of sites needing CTC clearance, and GOV.UK describes Belmarsh and Manchester as A or high security.

In shortFive more long-term high security prisons sit beside the eight, with no CTC requirement listed, and they are best treated as the long-term estate rather than Category A prisons in the narrow sense.

The HMPPS jobs page lists five more prisons in the same group, with no CTC clearance stated: HMP Garth, HMP Gartree, HMP Isle of Wight, HMP Lowdham Grange, HMP Swaleside. It describes long term high security prisons as holding prisoners serving long sentences.

In the 2025/26 performance ratings all five carry the Category B functional group, and the dataset's own descriptions label Garth and Gartree as high security and the other three as Category B training prisons.

• Of the five, HMP Swaleside (£3,500) carries a Band 3 market supplement on the HMPPS pay page, non-pensionable and, according to the pay page, guaranteed to at least March 2027; Woodhill, in the CTC group, is the other site on the list.
• Lowdham Grange is on the list because it returned to public sector management in 2024; older lists that show it as a privately run prison are out of date, as our private prisons guide explains.
• Isle of Wight operates across two sites, Albany and Parkhurst.
• The prisons in this group are managed in the HMPPS regions called Long Term and High Security North and South, according to the June 2026 workforce statistics, rather than in a geographic region. That is why a prison in Kent or Buckinghamshire can sit with ones in Durham and Cambridgeshire in HMPPS data. Our HMPPS structure guide shows how prison regions work.

In shortPublished staffing, ratings and inspection dates show each prison as a workplace, not a verdict on whether it is a good first posting.

Because this site is about working in prisons, here is what the published data says about the eight CTC prisons as workplaces. HMPPS's June 2026 workforce statistics give hours-adjusted Band 3 to 5 officer numbers against target for 8 of the eight: 2,984 full-time-equivalent officers in post against 3,442 targeted, at 30 June 2026.

That is a gap of 458 FTE across the group. Staffing shortfalls describe how many officers a prison has against its target; they are not a vacancy count and they say nothing about how many are being recruited.

The 2025/26 performance ratings and the most recent HMIP report dates are in the table below. Ratings run from Outstanding to Serious concern; the rating is a performance measure for the establishment, not a verdict on the working environment.

In shortYou need CTC clearance and three years of UK residence; pay follows the normal Band 3 zones.

• CTC prisons8Counter Terrorism Check clearance required
• UK residence3 yearsResident in the UK for the last three years
• Capacity (eight CTC prisons)5,014Operational capacity at 24 August 2026 (HMPPS monthly bulletin)

To work in the eight CTC prisons you need Counter Terrorism Check security clearance and must have been resident in the UK for the last three years to qualify. CTC is a security check separate from the standard recruitment vetting that every candidate goes through.

The careers page does not say how long it takes, and we do not know of a published processing time, so ask the recruitment team when you apply. Our prison officer vetting guide and nationality and residency rules guide cover the wider checks.

Pay follows the standard HMPPS Band 3 structure for the zone the prison sits in. Seven of the eight CTC prisons are in the national zone and Belmarsh is in outer London, so Belmarsh officers are on the outer London scale shown in our pay by region guide.

• 2 of the thirteen long-term and high security prisons carry a market supplement on the HMPPS page (Woodhill, £3,500; Swaleside, £3,500).
• We have not found a published allowance that applies to high security prisons as a group, so do not assume one: check the advert and the offer letter, and see our market supplements guide.
• The best source for what the job is like is the establishment itself. Ask at interview how the unit you would join is staffed, how searching and escorts work, and what extra training applies to the high security estate.
• Our day in the life guide sets out the published duties of a Band 3 officer, which apply across prison types.

In shortThe careers page lists these prisons as places to work, but timing and training are questions for recruitment.

HMPPS lists these prisons on its careers site as places you can work as a prison officer, and the page we read does not mention any requirement for previous prison experience. It does set the clearance and residence rules above, and it does not set a different training route.

The recruitment campaign that applies to the vacancy you apply for governs the details, including training location and any conditions of the role, so read the advert and confirm with the recruitment team.

What we cannot say from published sources is how often these prisons recruit new entrants, how long clearance takes, or whether induction differs from other prisons. Do not rely on forum posts for them: the clearance and training pipelines change, and an older account may describe a process that no longer applies.

In shortWomen and young people use Restricted Status; Scotland and Northern Ireland run their own systems.

The Category A system in PSI 09/2015 applies to adult men. Our women's prisons guide covers the female estate as a workplace.

We therefore do not call any Scottish or Northern Irish prison Category A, and you should treat web lists that do with caution. Pay and recruitment differ too, and our Scotland pay guide and Northern Ireland pay guide cover them.

For the full picture of how the estate fits together, including open prisons and the private sector, start with the UK prisons list and the open prisons guide, and use the prisons directory to open any establishment's page.

Restricted Status

A female, young person or young adult prisoner whose escape would present a serious risk to the public and who is required to be held in designated secure accommodation. The instruction says Restricted Status prisoners do not have escape risk classifications, and that they must be treated as Category A every time they leave their allocated establishment. It does not name the prisons that hold them, so we do not either.

Scotland

The Scottish Prison Service does not describe its prisons with the A to D vocabulary used in England and Wales; its own prisons page describes each establishment's role, and it says HMP Shotts is its only prison solely for long-term adult males.

Northern Ireland

The Department of Justice in Northern Ireland describes Maghaberry as a modern high security prison housing adult male long-term sentenced and remand prisoners.

• Category A applies to adult men in England and Wales; women, young people and young adults are Restricted Status prisoners.
• Scotland does not use the A to D vocabulary; HMP Shotts is its only prison solely for long-term adult males.
• Northern Ireland describes Maghaberry as a high security prison.

In shortThis is a workplace guide: it leaves out visiting, prisoner contact and prisoner conditions, and describes the position as at 3 October 2026.

This site is written for people who work, or want to work, in the prison service. We therefore do not cover visiting, prisoner contact, individual prisoners' cases or prisoner conditions.

We have not tried to answer questions about what life inside a Category A prison is like for the people held there. Those are matters for the official prisoner and family information on GOV.UK and the relevant prison's own pages.

We also avoid counting prisoners. The number of Category A prisoners is not published in the sources we opened for this guide, and we will not estimate it. Where official statistics exist on the prison population, they are published by the Ministry of Justice and HMPPS; use those directly.