Prisoners: Coronavirus

(asked on 22nd April 2020) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what progress he has made on installing temporary sleeper pods in prisons to aid the isolating of covid-19 prisoners; how many pods have been ordered; and how long those pods are planned to be used.


Answered by
Lucy Frazer Portrait
Lucy Frazer
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
This question was answered on 27th April 2020

Creating additional space in the existing estate, alongside measures to limit prisoner movement and releasing low-risk offenders, will help prevent our NHS being overwhelmed.

We began installing the first wave of 500 temporary, single occupancy cells in the week commencing 6 April. So far, 300 units have now been delivered to eight HMPPS sites and installation is in progress. The first 48 were installed at HMP North Sea Camp and we have also installed 24 cells at both HMPs Highpoint and Hollesley Bay. These are undergoing the final operational checks before being occupied. Installation continues at HMPs Littlehey, Moorland/Lindholme, Wymott, Coldingley and Hatfield.

Our ambition is to secure and install 2000 additional cells to help contain the spread of COVID-19 within our prisons. A further 80 single occupancy cells have been confirmed to hire, bringing the total confirmed at 580. We are successfully working with further companies to secure hundreds more to place across the prison estate.

These units are a temporary measure to mitigate the impact of COVID-19. Prisoners will return to their usual accommodation arrangements when safe to do so. Once the units are no longer required they will be removed.

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