Plans to add 20,000 prison places running £4.2bn over budget and five years late

Government plans to expand the prison estate by 20,000 new cell spaces are running five years behind schedule and will cost £4.2bn more than first forecast, a damning report by the spending watchdog has found.

- HOLLY BANCROFT

Even if the current expansion plans are achieved, watchdog the National Audit Office (NAO) predicts that there will still be a shortage of 12,400 places by 2027.

Amid an overcrowding crisis in England’s prisons, the prison and probation service has only created a third (6,518) of the 20,000 additional places that were promised by the mid-2020s, the report said. The prison overcrowding crisis is down to the failure of the previous Conservative government to make sure policy changes bringing in longer jail sentences and boosting police numbers matched the space available in prisons to hold criminals, according to the report published today.

The watchdog also said the then government’s 2021 pledge to create an extra 20,000 cell spaces – by building more prisons, temporary wings and refurbishing existing cell blocks – is now not expected to be met until 2031, around five years later than promised. The government now expects that the expansion plans will cost between £9.4bn and £10.1bn, which will be at least £4.2bn over previous forecasts, the NAO revealed.