Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 14
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)
MoJ confirmed that it is relying on the Government’s response to the sentencing review to help it manage the expected gap between capacity and demand.46 Given its forecasts suggest it could run out of places again in early 2026, we challenged MoJ on whether there would be sufficient time to implement measures resulting from the review.47 It told us that it did not think the timeline was impossible. MoJ explained that timelines for the review had been considered with projected shortfalls in mind and it had been planning carefully for this.48 However, it stressed that the review is independent and it will have to ‘wait and see’ what the outcomes are.49
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.