Skip to main content

Prison Accommodation

Question for Ministry of Justice

UIN 117613, tabled on 6 January 2023

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment his Department has made on the availability of prison places in 2023.

Answered on

11 January 2023

The Ministry of Justice continually monitors the availability of prison places and will ensure availability of places sufficient for the requirement.

Following a sharp increase in the adult male prison population in the autumn we formally activated Operation Safeguard, working alongside the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) to provide additional capacity as a precautionary measure as needed, to ensure the smooth running of the prison estate. No police cells have yet been used.

To ensure ongoing availability, we are delivering 20,000 additional, modern prison places, the largest prison build programme in a century. We have already delivered over 3,100 of these additional places to date.

Named day
Named day questions only occur in the House of Commons. The MP tabling the question specifies the date on which they should receive an answer. MPs may not table more than five named day questions on a single day.