Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 17
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)
HMPPS told us that probation officers and probation services officers were already dealing with a workload equivalent to 102% of capacity.60 We raised the potential impact on probation services if the sentencing review recommends alternatives to custody, possibly requiring more support from the probation service. HMPPS commented that if more people shift from short custody into probation this would need more support from probation officers. It told us that additional work could not be given to probation services without establishing what probation services would not be doing in future. It told us that “the lowest rung” of the probation caseload is those people who would only receive community sentence, not a prison sentence, and that there is no evidence that intensive supervision is very helpful for these people.61 50 C&AG’s Report, para 3.8 51 Q 134 52 Q 45 53 Q 44 54 C&AG’s Report, para 1.25 55 C&AG’s Report, para 1.24 56 C&AG’s Report, para 3.8 57 Q 47 58 Q 50 59 Qq 49–50 60 Q 118 61 Qq 119–121 13 2 Costs and impacts of the prison crisis Costs of the crisis
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.