Government admits prison expansion plan is ‘unachievable'

Telegraph

5 hours ago

The Government has admitted its plans to expand Britain's prisons are 'unachievable'.
Two of the Ministry of Justice's infrastructure projects have 'major issues', according to the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (Nista).
The Government previously promised to increase capacity in Britain's category B and C male prisons, and provide additional permanent places in the open prison estate.
Both projects, which the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) said 'supports' Labour's commitment to 20,000 additional prison places, have been derailed by the supplier going into administration.
Nista, a unit that reports to the Treasury and the Cabinet Office, uses a traffic light system to indicate progress on large infrastructure projects.
According to its rating system, red means 'successful delivery of the project appears to be unachievable'. Both projects were given a 'red' rating.
A third project, the New Build project, was rated 'amber'. Nista said that although one of the four new prisons promised, HMP Millsike, was on schedule, 'timeline risks remain' for the other three.
The prisons system in Britain was brought ' dangerously close to collapse ' by previous government policies, according to the sentencing review by David Gauke, the former justice secretary, in February.
Shabana Mahmood, the Justice Secretary, who released criminals early to avert overcrowding, has described the consequences of prisons running out of space as ' terrifying '.
The first project, the houseblocks and refurbishments programme, was designed to deliver about 2,000 additional places 'primarily in the closed male category B and C estate'.
Category B prisons are the second-highest security category, and are either for prisoners taken directly from local courts, or training prisons for long-term and high-security inmates.
The description of the project said this would include 'modern, purpose-built houseblocks which will provide improved living space for prisoners and a safer working environment for staff'.
The second, the category D programme, would 'provide additional permanent places across the category D open prison estate', according to the Government.
ISG, a construction giant that held £1bn in government contracts including with the MoJ for prison-building, fell into administration in September last year.
The company was carrying out building and repair work on 2,000 out-of-commission cells before it collapsed.
The Labour manifesto had promised to fulfil a previous Conservative Party commitment to creating 20,000 new spaces.
Ministers have said that the Government is on track to deliver 14,000 places by 2031, having bolstered the number of spaces by 2,500 since the election.
Nista said that its delivery confidence assessments were not a 'comprehensive reflection of project performance, but reflect a project's likelihood of success at a specific snapshot in time if issues and risks are left unaddressed'.
Data from the Commons public accounts committee in March found that the prison population was increasing by 4,500 a year, nearly 100 a week.
This will mean that jails in England and Wales will be full by early 2026 and short of 5,400 spaces by November 2027.