Lord chancellor Shabana Mahmood will today unveil details of a '10-year capacity strategy’ that will see planning rules changed to get prisons built quickly and 14,000 new prison places by 2031.

In an announcement today, the Ministry of Justice said four new prisons will be built in the next seven years, opening up 6,400 places. A further 6,400 places will be built in new blocks on current sites, 1,000 rapid deployment cells will be rolled out and more than 1,000 existing cells will be refurbished.

The ministry said £2.3bn will be invested to back the prison build, with a further £500m for building maintenance. 

‘To get shovels into the ground fast’, planning rules will be changed and prisons will be deemed ‘sites of national importance, reflecting their critical importance to public protection’. To ‘get ahead of demand’, the government will acquire new land for potential future prisons.

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Mahmood said: ‘Part of our plan for change, this capacity strategy, alongside an independent review of sentencing policy, will keep our streets safe and ensure no government runs out of prison places again.’

Around 5,500 prisoners were released earlier than planned in September and October to ease the prison population crisis.

The ministry also announced that a statement on prison capacity will be published in parliament every year to hold the government and future administrations to account on prison building and the long-term impact of changes to sentencing.

Law Society president Richard Atkinson welcomed the announcement, but said that ‘as an essential service protecting the public, the criminal justice system can only be dealt with holistically'.

Atkinson said building more prisons had to be matched by investment in legal aid, the Crown Prosecution Service and courts. He also highlighted the need to invest in prisoner rehabilitation to reduce reoffending rates and tackle the court backlog to reduce the remand population.

‘After decades of neglect of our criminal justice system, sustained investment and long-term measures which take all parts of the system into account, such as legal aid, police, prosecution, courts, prisons and probation, is the only long-term solution,’ Atkinson said.

 

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