Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will allocate the proceeds of the sale of HMP Holloway to support the female offender strategy.

The sale of the former HMP & YOI Holloway to Peabody Estates was announced on 8 March 2019. The proceeds from the sale have been reinvested into the general custodial estate budget for the 2019/20 financial year, which will benefit both the male and female custodial estates.

The purchasers intend to include a Women’s Centre as part of their development of the Holloway site. Sustainable community provision for women is essential to delivering the vision of the female offender strategy, which was published in June 2018. Women’s centres can play an important role in helping female offenders to address their often-complex needs, and they are often at the heart of the holistic, multi-agency, whole system approach models. The Government has already invested £1 million in these models between 2016 and 2020. In addition to this, we are investing a further £5m grant funding through our female offender strategy in 2018-20, to support community provision for female offenders and women at risk of offending.