Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 9
15th Report - Prison estate capacity
Published 14 Mar 2025
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee Prison estate capacity All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
In December 2024, MoJ published its 10–year capacity strategy which set out its plans to deliver the remaining 14,000 prison places by 2031.29 The majority of the remaining places will come from four new prisons (6,500) and additional houseblocks (6,400), with a further 1,100 from Rapid Deployment Cells and around 1,150 places from refurbishments of cells.30 The strategy emphasised the continued need for prison places, stating, “we still project the prison population to increase by an average of 3,000 annually over the coming years”.31
From: Public Accounts Committee, 15th Report - Prison estate capacity (HC 366), 14 March 2025
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 16 May 2025.
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government agrees with most of the Committee's recommendations on prison capacity, disagrees with two, and reports several as implemented in April 2025.
- On lessons learned, HMPPS is "committed to reviewing" its Lessons Learned Strategy and Log on a minimum bi-annual basis, with the next review point in October 2025.
- It disagrees with the recommendation for a business case on the maintenance backlog, stating that future investment decisions and business cases "will depend on the outcome of the ongoing Spending Review round".
- It disagrees with the recommendation on evaluating the impact of capacity pressures on risk assessments for new prisoners, stating "it is not possible to evaluate the impact" but that HMPPS will continue to monitor their completeness.
- It agrees to update the Committee within two months of the Sentencing Review's next phase on the forecast prison place shortage, the maintenance backlog and fire safety.