by Bethany Rielly

CHILDREN held at a “volatile” youth jail carried weapons “just in case,” a damning inspectors report said. 

Inmates at Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre, near Rugby, were removed from the site during the summer amid serious ongoing safety concerns. 

Staff and children told inspectors that they feared someone would “die soon” due to poor management of the youth jail, run by US-company MTC.

A “volatile culture” at the site was so bad that children carried weapons “just in case,” the Ofsted report said. 

Rainsbrook has been downgraded by inspectors to “inadequate,” the worst rating Ofsted can give. 

Inspectors also found many occasions where children were not being taken to planned healthcare appointments on time and sometimes “not at all.” 

Poor education, conditions and a lack of skills and experience among staff were also identified at the site. 

The findings were published today following the government’s decision to remove all children from the site in June. 

It came after the Inspectorate of Prisons and the Care Quality Commission issued a rare urgent notification to then justice secretary Robert Buckland over the “continued poor care and leadership.”

Action was taken after it emerged that children were being held in their cells for more than 23 hours a day during the lockdown. 

Ofsted’s chief inspector Amanda Spielman said: “Today’s report reveals a litany of failures.

“Rainsbrook has once more fallen drastically short in caring for especially vulnerable children, despite being warned about poor practice last year.

“These children need the highest quality training, care and support to get their lives back on track. It’s vital that there is long-term, sustainable improvement at the centre.”

A Youth Custody Service spokesperson said: “We recognise the very serious problems at Rainsbrook raised in this report and the failure of MTC to do their duty by the young people in their care. We will set out our plans for the future of Rainsbrook shortly.”

An MTC spokesperson said the firm will “vigorously” challenge the report’s findings claiming they are “based on opinion and are not always supported by evidence.

“MTC have always been committed to delivering good quality care to the children we had responsibility for and are saddened that Ofsted have failed to recognise this,” they added.