Prisoners are celebrating birthdays OUTSIDE their jail and it's causing misery

Exclusive: the loved ones of inmates are regularly setting off pyrotechnics close to the prison wall, say residents

Inmates at troubled Forest Bank jail in Salford are able to celebrate birthdays thanks to huge industrial fireworks being set off by loved ones just over the prison walls.

The pyrotechnics are now happening at all times of the day and night, according to residents who have lived at the site since before the jail was opened in 2000.

Managers at the privately-operated category B prison said they were open to discussing concerns with neighbours and that 'we seek to minimize impact on those who live nearby'.

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Angela Dunbar, 66, lives in a semi on Billington Road - one of six homes on the cul-de-sac which is separated from the prison by a small parcel of woodland - and spoke to the M.E.N about what it's like to neighbour a jail.

She told the Manchester Evening News: "To be honest we all thought it was going to be a nightmare (before it was built). We were frightened of having a prison built near us. We were expecting escaped convicts coming through the house!

She and her husband Chic, 60, who are both foster carers, have become used to the noise of drones flying overhead - they have been used to drop drugs into the prison - and the sight of prison visitors driving up their road, having taken a wrong turn.

The couple recall the 'spiel' they were given before the prison was built on the site of the former Agecroft power station from 1998.

"They promised they would landscape the bottom of the road and keep the area tidy and that there would be public footpaths. None of that has happened," said Chic, who used to own his own company.

The couple point to the woodland close to their home which they say hasn't been maintained. Broken railings - the result of falling trees - have not been repaired. The couple, along with other residents of the street clubbed together to get the road outside their homes resurfaced about ten years ago - they say this was the responsibility of the prison or the Home Office.

The residents say that when they contact management at the prison about these problems they are 'uncooperative'.

But, in recent years, there has been a new development - fireworks.

"It happens any time of the night or day," said Angela. "And they're big ones, big industrial boxes of fireworks. They can be going for five or ten minutes. I don't know how they can afford them. It's something we've come to expect. It happens most weekends."

Asked whether he enjoyed the fireworks, Chic said: "No, not at midnight when the dogs are barking."

Despite that, Angela says: "But to be honest, if you weren't told (the prison) was there you wouldn't know."

"It's the maintenance of the area that's the big issue for us," said businessman Paul Armitage, 42, who lives on Billington Road with his partner and three children.

"The place has been left to fall into disrepair," he says of the area around the prison.

Recalling the time it was built, he added: "We felt we were being imprisoned."

Paul grew up in another house on Billington Road and remembers the former power station. He recalls that his parents moved into the house in 1987 and has memories of two cooling towers that once stood at the end of the street.

"The power station was cool," he says. "It was an interesting place to be. It was sad to see it go actually. Those cooling towers were an eye-sore but you just got used to them."

As a power station, he said the area was 'better maintained' and that the perimeter fencing was 'always painted by the power station'.

"We were assured that would all continue but it all just went into decline," Paul says of the prison taking over the site. He said that in the years since, he and other residents had repeatedly complained to the prison about fallen trees. In 2021, residents sorted the problem themselves with chainsaws, he said.

He claims that lack of maintenance of woodland on the site has also impacted on wildlife in the area, including deer. And the latest problem, he says, is the fireworks being set off near the prison wall.

"It can be any time. It can be midnight. You think 'have these people not got work tomorrow?' It's just ridiculous," he added.

He went on: "I think prison should be prison. For a lot of them, it's probably better that on the outside. It's not really a deterrent is it?"

In April last year, an M.E.N. investigation into Forest Bank prison uncovered allegations of widespread drug use and inmates who 'run the wings', prompting an MP and Salford's mayor to write to the government to demand an 'urgent' review.

Our revelations included a call from Salford and Eccles MP Rebecca Long-Bailey for the Ministry of Justice to cancel a billion pound contract it has with facilities management giant Sodexo to run the troubled jail.

Our investigation, based on allegations from a whistleblower, an ex-prisoner and his father, and the family of a grandfather who died in his cell, exposed what Salford and Eccles MP Rebecca Long-Bailey branded a 'culture of lawlessness' at the jail.

We revealed that:

• Drugs are rife, smuggled in via 'legal letters' and inmates are 'off their t**s a lot of the time'
• Inmates brew their own hooch
• Violence is commonplace and inmates 'run the wings'
• Staff feel 'unsafe' and a lone guard can be 'left to guard 100-plus inmates'
• Staff have to buy 'their own uniform because of cost-cutting'
• A desperate father paid off a drug dealer on his addict son's wing because 'staff didn't protect him'

Sodexo's contract to run the prison ends on January 19, 2025. Back in 1998, it was awarded a deal worth £1,006,771,964 to design, build and run the prison built on the site of the former Agecroft power station under a private finance initiative to house a maximum 1,064 inmates. The deal was to last 25 years, before being extended.

The facilities management giant, founded and based in France, runs six prisons in England and Scotland, and last year recorded revenues of 21.1 billion euros, including 'underlying operating profit' of more than a billion euros, up 83 per cent.

An HMP Forest Bank spokesperson said: "We take the concerns of our neighbours seriously as our priority is to maintain a safe and secure environment for those who live and work near HMP Forest Bank.

"The prison serves all of the Greater Manchester courts, and as such it is a large and busy operation. While we seek to minimize impact on those who live nearby, however, most of the land around the prison is publicly accessible. We are open to discussing any concerns, including property matters, privately with our neighbours."