Plans to Expand Prison Capacity Will Be Late and Over Budget by £4 Billion, Says Auditors

Prison vans arrive following rioting at HMP Birmingham, in Birmingham, England, on Dec. 17, 2016. Oli Scarff/AFP/Getty Images

Plans from the previous government to expand prison capacity will take five years longer than expected and be at least £4.2 billion higher than estimated costs, the National Audit Office (NAO) has said.

The government spending watchdog said in its report published on Wednesday that the 2021 commitment to deliver 20,000 new prison spaces by 2027 will not be fulfilled until 2031.

Plans are also expected to cost between £9.4 billion and £10.1 billion, at least £4.2 billion more than the 2021 estimates, owing to factors including the impact of inflation on construction costs.

The NAO said that as of September, only one-third (6,518) of the 20,000 have been made available. It added that the current plans are “insufficient to meet future demand,” with there being a projected shortage of 12,400 prison spaces by the end of 2027.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) plan to expand capacity by building more prisons and temporary wings as well as refurbishing existing cell blocks.

‘Unrealistic Timelines’

The NAO said that there are several reasons for the delays to the expansion plans, including overestimating the ability to gain planning permission for three out of the six new proposed prisons, government bodies not working together, and “unrealistic timelines.”

The public spending watchdog concluded that the “current crisis” in the prison estate “is a consequence of previous governments’ failure to align criminal justice policies with funding for the prison estate, leading to reactive solutions which represent poor value for money.”

It added: “Policies such as introducing tougher sentences and increasing the number of police officers led to steep increases in expected demand for prison places. However, years of under-investment in maintaining the prison estate put MoJ and HMPPS in a weak position to respond to these increases.”

Head of the NAO Gareth Davies said, “The Government must learn lessons from the current prison capacity crisis to ensure the long-term resilience and cost-effectiveness of the prison estate.”

Early Release

The report noted that the government had largely prioritised short-term solutions to the capacity crisis, such as moving inmates to open-air prisons and releasing prisoners early when the government had “exhausted other options.”

The NAO said that in October, 2024, there were 85,900 people in prison across England and Wales, a 3 percent fall since Sept. 6, 2024, as a result of the early release of at least 3,100 inmates.

In July, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced plans to temporarily cut the minimum time convicts must serve behind bars from 50 percent to 40 percent, in order to ease pressure on prison capacity.

The watchdog said that both the MoJ and HMPPS had recognised the government’s early release scheme “could impact the effective rehabilitation of prisoners, which in turn may lead to higher reoffending rates and expose the public to a greater safety risk.”

This was an issue anticipated by Chief Inspector of Prisons Charlie Taylor, who said in September that it was “inevitable that some of these prisoners will get recalled to custody and it’s inevitable that some of them will go out homeless.”

Condition of the Prison Estate

The report added that there will be a continued risk to maintaining capacity in prisons over the next few years, “because of the poor condition of parts of the estate.”

It found that HMPPS’s backlog of maintenance works has doubled, from £900 million to £1.8 billion in four years. The prison service also estimates it would cost £2.8 billion over the next five years to bring the whole estate into a “fair” condition, which the NAO said was “more than double its current maintenance expenditure.”

People outside HM Prison Brixton in London, England, on Sept. 10, 2024. Jeff Moore/PA Wire

Earlier this year Rochester Prison became the first Category C jail to be issued with an urgent notification, following a decade of failure where the institution had fundamentally failed in its role to prepare inmates for life in the community, with less than a third engaged in work or training.

Inspectors had also described “squalid” conditions in the prison, with “decrepit buildings and infestations of both rats and mice plaguing older buildings.”

Prisons Minister Lord James Timpson said the NAO’s report “lays bare the litany of failures which brought our prison system to the brink. This not only risked public safety but added billions in extra costs to taxpayers.”

Timpson said the government had taken immediate action to address overcrowding “and will now focus on improving conditions in the long-term. This includes shortly publishing a 10-year prison capacity strategy to put our jails on a sustainable footing.”

PA Media contributed to this report.