Prison Accommodation

(asked on 30th June 2020) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the 27 January 2020 report of the Comptroller and Auditor General entitled Improving the Prison Estate, what estimate he has made of the number of prison places that will be lost in the next five years as a result of estate disrepair.


Answered by
Lucy Frazer Portrait
Lucy Frazer
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
This question was answered on 7th July 2020

As stated in the Comptroller and Auditor General’s report, the Ministry estimates that currently approximately 500 places are lost permanently each year due to deterioration in the material fabric of the estate. This is based on the average losses of places that the prison estate has experienced over the last few years, on the assumption that funding levels do not increase significantly beyond those seen over the period.

This estimate of capacity loss is kept under review to reflect developments in the prison estate, including levels of investment and maintenance.

We have secured an additional £156 million for financial year 2020/21, which will be targeted at addressing some of the most urgent maintenance issues across the prison estate.

In addition, one thousand temporary cells are in the process of being installed across the estate. This will allow the Prison Service to increase capacity and help to speed up maintenance by enabling us to close places, in order to carry out refurbishment work more quickly

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