In the 12 months to March 2025, there were 1,712 drone incidents at prisons across England and Wales – a 43 per cent jump on the previous year and a more than tenfold rise compared with the 138 sightings recorded in the year to March 2021. The numbers were confirmed by the Ministry of Justice and reported by Channel 4 News, Sky News and GOV.UK. They describe a problem that has stopped being a prison-estate curiosity and has become a national security category in its own right.
For commercial security buyers, the headline is easy to miss. Prisons are not pharmacies, data centres or stadiums. But the response now being mounted by government – including a £1.85 million Ministry of Justice innovation competition launched in February 2026 – is reshaping the counter-UAS market that protects every other category of UK site. If your business owns critical infrastructure, holds high-value stock, runs an outdoor event, or sits inside a sensitive cordon, what is happening above HMPs is directly relevant to what you should be planning for above your own perimeter.
The scale of what HMPPS is dealing with
The 1,712 figure covers confirmed drone incidents – sightings, recoveries, attempted drops – at prisons across England and Wales between April 2024 and March 2025. That is more than four drone events every day, across an estate of roughly 120 prisons. Channel 4 News framed the trajectory as a 1,000 per cent rise over four years. HMPPS data also recorded 26,348 incidents where drugs were found in prisons over the same period, a 25 per cent annual increase, and a chunk of that contraband is now arriving by air.
One court case heard between late 2024 and early 2025 illustrated the sophistication involved. A single organised group reportedly carried out around 140 drone flights over a three-month window, accounting for an estimated 75 per cent of all drone drops into London prisons in that period. Drones recovered in Metropolitan Police operations against the group included a model worth £6,000, with a 40-minute flight time and the capacity to carry four payloads on a single sortie. This is not the consumer-grade quadcopter most security plans were written against.
What the £1.85m counter-UAS competition signals
In February 2026, UK Defence Innovation launched the “Countering Illegal Use of UAS Around Prisons and Sensitive Sites” themed competition, with up to £1.85 million in funding available. The competition is delivered on behalf of the Ministry of Justice and HMPPS, with support from the Home Office, the Ministry of Defence, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, Innovate UK and police forces.
Two details matter for the commercial market. First, the funding focuses on “last-line-of-defence” solutions – technologies that can safely neutralise a drone after detection, deterrence and electronic mitigation have already been attempted. Second, the proposal deadline closed on 31 March 2026 and, according to New Civil Engineer, the volume of proposals received was high enough that contract start dates have been pushed into August 2026. The supply side of UK counter-UAS is now serious, plural and competitive – which is good news for any commercial site that wants to procure it.
Why prison drones are a commercial security issue
The same drone platforms, payload techniques and pilot tradecraft being refined against prisons are transferable. A 4kg multirotor with a 40-minute endurance is just as capable of dropping a package over a data centre fence, conducting hostile reconnaissance against a corporate headquarters, or skimming the perimeter of a music festival as it is of approaching a prison wing. The Israeli Embassy cordon in London earlier in 2026 already prompted us to flag the rising UAS threat to UK sites, and the prison numbers reinforce the pattern.
Three categories of commercial site should treat this as a planning input today:
- Critical infrastructure and high-value commercial estates. Data centres, energy facilities and corporate HQs sit in the same threat space that drove the NDA’s involvement in the MoJ competition.
- Construction and logistics sites holding high-value plant or materials. Drone-enabled reconnaissance is the cheapest way for organised crime to scope a target. Site managers should be briefing supervisors on what to record.
- Outdoor events and venues with defined airspace. Crowds plus open sightlines plus regulated airspace create a particular vulnerability profile, especially in light of Martyn’s Law obligations.
What this means for commercial sites
Counter-UAS is moving from a niche capability to a baseline expectation. We would suggest that any commercial site reviewing its security plan in 2026 covers four things. First, detection: do guarding teams know what a drone overflight looks like, are reports logged, and is there a structured liaison with local police if patterns emerge? Second, policy: who in the organisation owns the response when a drone is spotted, and what triggers an evacuation or stand-down? Third, physical hardening: are roof voids, loading bays and outdoor storage protected against airborne drops as well as ground access? Fourth, procurement readiness: when last-line-of-defence technologies become commercially available off the back of the MoJ competition later in 2026, sites with a documented threat assessment will be in a position to specify and buy. Sites without one will not.
Our corporate security and construction site security teams are already incorporating drone-incident logging into standard guarding instructions, and our event security planning includes airspace risk as a documented section rather than an afterthought.
Need a security review?
If your site is reviewing its airspace exposure, our team can run a structured review covering detection, response and procurement options. Call us on 020 3700 0967, email info@secureonsitesecurity.co.uk, or use our contact page. We will come back within one working day.
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