Recommendation 16

One of the consequences of the Ministry not understanding its assets prior to letting the contracts was that demand for reactive maintenance work as a result of poor-quality assets or vandalism cost the taxpayer almost £143 million more than expected between 2015–16 and the first half of 2019–20.32 We asked why it had taken HMPPS so long to understand the condition of the assets in the prison estate. HMPPS told us that, under the first generation of contracts, providers were responsible for producing a detailed survey but the quality of what was provided was mixed so it had decided to undertake this centrally. It expected to start the survey in January 2019 but had difficulty finding providers to take on the work due to a lack of interest. HMPPS started a pilot survey using its own staff in two prisons in April 2020. It told us that it was now two-thirds of the way through its asset survey and had captured data for three-quarters of the sites it needed to include in the survey. It also told us that two prisons, at Birmingham and Onley, were now using live asset data to manage their day-to-day operations. Prior to the pandemic, HMPPS expected the pilot surveys to be complete by August 2020.33 It explained it had revised its timetable and was now “working quickly”. HMPPS accepted that it had been somewhat naïve to expect providers to be able to produce a better quality asset registers than it was able to, and asserted that it had learned lessons from this experience.34 Both the Ministry and HMPPS told us that the survey that was now being undertaken would provide a much more comprehensive and detailed inventory of the assets in the prison estate.35 The female prison estate