Blog: Deconstructing the government’s prison building plans

When is a new hospital not a new hospital? With the government’s commitment to building 40 new hospitals by 2030 facing a National Audit Office review, it seemed timely to take a closer look at the government’s slew of prison building announcements. How many new prison places are being built, and when will they open?

No shortage of commitments

It seems not a month goes by where the Ministry of Justice isn’t announcing another prison building commitment. £1.3bn for 10,000 prison places by 2020; £2.5bn for 10,000 places; £4bn for 18,000 places; and most recently £3.8bn for total of 20,000 new places.  Keeping track of what the government is committed to, let alone what it has delivered can quickly lead to furrowed brows.

20,000 new prison places by the mid-2020s

Look for the most recent government announcement on prison building and you’ll quickly find that they plan to build 20,000 new prison places by the mid-2020s. So far, so straightforward.

The first mention of 20,000 new prison places came in the 2021 Spending Review, where the government said:

Note, this is lower than the £4bn announced the year before which was to build 18,000 places. Some of this will be due to existing spending which took place between the SR20 and SR21 settlements.

Or is that 18,000?

The recent Prisons Strategy White Paper, published after the 2021 Spending Review, also refers to “Our existing programme to deliver 20,000 prison places”. But when you look at the detail, the government reveals that this will be achieved by delivering “18,000 additional, modern prison places by the mid-2020s and…up to 2,000 new temporary places”.

They then go on to break down the financing further:

Note again £3.5bn for 18,000 places, not £4bn.

…or is it £4bn?

With the familiar policy by press release fanfare, in February this year Dominic Raab announced that “an unprecedented expansion and refurbishment programme will create more than 4,000 new prison places across the country”.

“These new places are part of the government’s £4 billion investment to create 20,000 modern and innovative prison places…”.

Someone remembered it was actually £4bn after all.

“The 4,000 places announced today will be created across 16 prisons through the building of new wings and refurbishing jails.”

So this 4,000 forms part of those 20,000 places—or should that be 18,000?

How many new prisons?

Whilst the very first major announcement on prison building in 2015 promised nine new prisons, it is clear that this is no longer the ambition. The Prisons Strategy White Paper refers to building four new prisons and on the next page commits to six new prisons. Again, whilst none of this is explicitly stated, it would be fair to assume that the completion of HMP Five Wells earlier this year and the construction of HMP Fosse Way form the first two of these six, with four more to follow.

What about expansions?

Four in three

The first announcement of expansions came in October 2020, with “four jails to be expanded over next 3 years”. These were:

• HMPs Guys Marsh (Dorset), Rye Hill (Warwickshire) and Stocken (Rutland) will benefit from additional houseblocks; and
• High Down (Surrey) will get a new workshop.

The announcement breaks this down:

“The project will see capacity increase by 180 places at HMP Guys Marsh, 462 at HMP Rye Hill and 206 at HMP Stocken, where a further new houseblock was opened in June 2019. HMP High Down’s new workshop will free up space for 90 extra places in the existing prison building as it moves toward an extended focus on work and training opportunities for offenders.”

As ever, announcements are made ahead of receiving planning approval to build them:

“Planning permission is being sought for works to begin, and the first prisoners are expected to arrive from Winter 2022 at Rye Hill jail, and throughout 2023 at the remaining sites.”

4,000 places

Dominic Raab’s announcement above (…or is it £4bn?) confirms that there will be 4,000 new prison places, “created across 16 prisons through the building of new wings and refurbishing jails”.

This “builds on [the October 2020 announcement], with a total of 16 sites being expanded and refurbished as part of the drive to create 20,000 new prison places by mid-2020s” according to the press release. One prison notably absent from the press release is HMP Rye Hill, whose 462 places were mentioned in the earlier announcement—although we understand that construction is currently underway.

Just as before, at the time of the announcement planning approval was yet to be given at the vast majority of these sites:

“All plans to refurbish and expand existing jails will be subject to planning permissions but the department already has planning for 5 of the prisons, HMPs Stocken, Guys Marsh, High Down, Birmingham and Liverpool.”

Actual progress

All of this shows the confusing picture that has emerged when prison building policy is allowed to be made by a patchwork of overlapping announcements.

So that provides some clarity on what the government has been pursuing, but how much has been delivered?

The Prisons Strategy White Paper is instructive here as well:

• By the end of 2021, we will have delivered around 1,000 additional prison places through a combination of refurbishments, installing temporary accommodation and repurposing the Morton Hall Immigration Removal Centre back into a prison;
• Construction is complete at HMP Five Wells, the new c.1,700 place Category C prison in Northamptonshire, which will open early in 2022;
• Construction is well underway at HMP Glen Parva, Leicestershire where we will open another c.1,700 place Category C prison in Spring 2023.

However, that first bullet point already starts to muddy the waters in assessing progress against delivery of 18,000 permanent places versus those “up to 2,000” temporary places.

The announcement by Dominic Raab (…or is it £4bn?) states that four of the seven refurbishments have already been completed—but again, detail is lacking. The press release doesn’t specify which prisons have had refurbishments; whether that has created additional capacity; and if so, then by how much.

The most recent announcement on prison building, made in June 2022, provides a bit more detail. Feltham, Aylesbury, Haverigg and Swinfen Hall are all identified as having completed refurbishment—but again there’s no detail on what additional capacity this has created. The announcement also states that there have been “small-scale investment projects at HMYOI Deerbolt, HMP Hollesley Bay and HMP Warren Hill”—again with no further detail. That leaves outstanding refurbishments to be completed for HMPs Norwich, Liverpool and Birmingham.

So how many additional places has the government actually delivered? By our calculation we’ve uncovered 2,239 identifiable places to date, plus however many unspecified places have been provided through refurbishment and “temporary accommodation”.

What this exercise has shown is that the government is happy to make headline grabbing announcements on how many more prison places they’re going to build. But when it comes to measuring how it has performed against those commitments, it’s considerably more tight-lipped.

Alex Hewson
Senior Policy and Communications Officer