Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Conclusion 15
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 ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
The NAO report highlighted several risks to existing prison capacity. This included that around a quarter (23,000) of occupied prison places are at risk of enforcement by the Crown Premises Fire Safety Inspectorate 38 Q 43 39 Qq 43,46 40 Ministry of Justice, Annual Statement on Prison Capacity: 2024, December 2024, page 7 41 C&AG’s Report, Figure 9 42 Q 84 43 C&AG’s Report, para 2.11 44 Ministry of Justice, Landmark Sentencing Review launched to end prison crisis, 21 October 2024 45 Independent Sentencing Review, History and Trends in Sentencing, 18 February 2025 46 Q 7 47 Q 98 48 Q 98 49 Q 105 12 if HMPPS do not make them fire–safety compliant by the end of 2027.50 HMPPS acknowledged that it will be “impossible” to meet this target, largely because of the collapse of one of its main contractors, ISG.51 It explained that there are issues with market capacity to take on these projects and that it would need to re–sequence where it takes cells out of use in order to manage capacity in the estate.52 HMPPS stressed that if places are not remediated by the end of 2027 it will take them out of use.53
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.