Once upon a time, healthcare meant hospitals or a visit to your GP.
A custodial environment? That could only mean prison.
But in 2026, the picture is far more complex.
Over the past year alone, Polar NE has worked on projects ranging from prisons and schools to secure children’s homes, custody suites and mental health hospitals.
A few years ago, many of these environments simply wouldn’t have been on our radar.
As a business, we have spent almost 20 years designing bespoke, innovative reduced-ligature windows and doors.
For most of that time, they were delivered primarily for the NHS, because for decades, the NHS has been shorthand for healthcare in the UK.
But the goalposts are shifting. Fast.
Society is increasingly waking up to the need for safer design solutions in non-traditional healthcare settings.
In prisons alone, the demand for mental health support has reached unprecedented levels.
Data published by the Centre for Mental Health suggests around 7,000 prisoners each year require mental health support.
Yet inspection reports paint an even more troubling picture.
One inspection published in December found that a well-known women’s prison was using “overstretched in-prison healthcare facilities, ill-equipped to provide specialist treatment and care to very vulnerable and mentally unwell women, as makeshift mental health wards, leaving them without the specialist care they need”.
Sadly, this situation is mirrored across large swathes of the prison estate.
That reality is why Polar NE’s specialist skills are increasingly being sought beyond the NHS.
One such project was HMP Stirling, Scotland’s new £85m, state-of-the-art women’s prison, which challenges many public perceptions of what custody looks like in the UK.
The facility is bright, airy and filled with natural light. But above all else, it had to be safe.
Polar NE supported the project by installing 120 Humber Two Secure windows, our most popular solution, alongside additional Trent Secure fixed units, helping to create an environment designed to protect those living within it.
Once upon a time, prisoners were simply kept under lock and key.
But experience has shown that this alone does not keep people safe.
Last year, more than 400 prisoners took their own lives, more than one every day, a figure that rose by 30 per cent year-on-year.
That is why the next generation of British prisons is being designed to work with people, not against them.
Mental health challenges are escalating across the UK.
Around one in six people experience a mental health condition, and it follows logically that rates are even higher among those in custody or care.
When mental health needs exist everywhere, safer environments must exist everywhere too.
For years, reduced-ligature windows and doors were reserved almost exclusively for mental health wards.
There was little overlap with other sectors. Yet the reality is simple: these solutions save lives.
They remove opportunities for harm: moments where people can make decisions they tragically cannot undo.
And they need to be more widely implemented.
Last month, Polar NE submitted a Freedom of Information request to the Ministry of Justice to understand how prevalent reduced-ligature windows and doors are across the UK prison estate, particularly following the Government’s 2021 Prisons Strategy White Paper commitment to deliver 290 anti-ligature cells nationwide.
Encouragingly, the response showed progress.
Over the past year, Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service has delivered 40 ligature-resistant cells across ten prison sites.
Further cells are currently being added, including new builds in Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds.
However, lives continue to be lost.
The FOI revealed that more than 100 prisoners took their own lives over the past three years in prisons not equipped with ligature-resistant cells.
More than a dozen of those deaths occurred in Leeds, where additional support is now thankfully being introduced.
The challenge, however, is complex. While new-build prisons are now designed with ligature resistance as standard, many existing sites are ageing, deteriorating and constrained by decades of underfunding.
At the same time, pressure on public finances means investment in prison infrastructure is often deprioritised.
And it isn’t just prisons where demand is rising.
Polar NE has also delivered significant work at Aycliffe Secure Centre, one of the most challenging children’s settings in the UK.
The site’s existing window systems were outdated and vulnerable to damage due to the complex behavioural needs of the young people living there.
Initially, the brief focused on installing new blind units. But that would have merely delayed the underlying issues.
Instead, Polar NE overhauled both the windows and blinds, improving durability while introducing blackout functionality, a change that has positively impacted sleep and wellbeing.
Innovation has always underpinned Polar NE’s approach.
At Aycliffe, that even extended to protective TV screens. Television can be a vital lifeline in secure environments, yet the small screens previously installed made viewing difficult.
By redesigning the opening and protection system, Polar NE enabled a larger screen to be safely installed, improving the experience for the young people using them.
It wasn’t something the team had anticipated doing. But then, a few years ago, the same could have been said about working inside prisons.
Today, demand is evolving. While around 90 per cent of Polar NE’s work remains within traditional healthcare settings, enquiries are increasingly coming from a wide range of sectors.
Why?
Because vulnerability is no longer confined to hospitals. It exists in classrooms, custody suites, police stations and children’s homes, many of which are now functioning as de facto mental health environments, without the infrastructure to support that role.
The challenge facing these organisations is not whether to respond, but how quickly they can adapt their environments to reflect reality.
Reduced-ligature windows and doors play a crucial role in that response. They help create spaces that feel calmer, safer and more supportive. But they must also be robust, reliable and thoughtfully designed.
For almost two decades, that has been Polar NE’s focus.
As demand continues to shift beyond the NHS, organisations across the UK are seeking specialist partners they can trust to deliver environments that protect life.
And while the settings may change, one principle remains constant:
Wherever vulnerable people live, learn or are cared for, the built environment must be part of the solution.
At Polar NE, that is the space we operate in, and increasingly, it is the space so many others now need us in too.