Recommendation 9

Lack of investment has also resulted in severe maintenance backlogs within the prison estate. As at April 2019, HMPPS had around 63,200 outstanding maintenance jobs. HMPPS also estimated that it would cost £916 million to address its backlog of major capital works. It forecasts that it will need to spend £194 million each year over the next 25 years for maintenance costs. We asked it why, despite this, it had underspent its budget for capital maintenance by £24 million. HMPPS told us that its maintenance programmes relied on certainty of funding across several years in order to go ahead, and that the rising prison population meant that the programmes were more complex to schedule. It told us that it was working hard to put any underspends into prison maintenance and that the £156 million additional funding secured from government would help bring more cells back into use. It assured us that the funding available for this year would stabilise the prison estate so that it would not continue to lose 500 places per year.18 We similarly asked the Ministry what its plans were to tackle the £900 million maintenance backlog that had built up across the estate. The Ministry accepted that major investment in maintenance within the prison estate was needed to improve conditions, and told us that it was starting work on this.19