The government is failing in its efforts to improve prison conditions, with record levels of safety breaches and “huge” backlogs in repairs, Whitehall’s spending watchdog has found. The National Audit Office said plans to “provide and maintain safe, secure and decent prisons” had not been carried out.

A report released on Friday found that safety in two out of every five inspected prisons were rated as poor or “not sufficiently good”, with recorded problems at an all-time high.

Over the last decade, the Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) has taken 1,730 cells permanently out of use and it expects to lose another 500 places every year because of the poor conditions of the remaining estate, the NAO said.

In the next three years, 41% of prisons need major repair or replacement work. There is currently a backlog of repairs that will cost £916m to fix, according to the report.

The prison population in December was around 82,300, equating to 98% of its capacity.

The report comes as ministers aim to pass emergency legislation to block the automatic early release of convicted terror offenders, which is likely to put further pressure on the prison system. The move follows three attacks in recent months by men convicted of terror offences, including the stabbing on Sunday of two people in Streatham, south London.

Responding to the report, Meg Hillier, chair of the public accounts committee, said the ministry had failed once more to oversee outsourcing firms or get to grips with management of a crumbling estate.

“As with probation reforms, the ministry has not got outsourcing right. Provider performance has been poor and planned savings failed to materialise.

“The ministry is on course to deliver just a third of previously promised places. The government say they want people to serve more time, but soon the prison population could exceed capacity. As the Streatham attack highlighted, the Prison and Probation Service urgently needs a long-term plan to improve our prisons and will need the funding to do this.”

In 2015, HMPPS outsourced management of prison facilities to Amey and Carillion, expecting to achieve savings of £79m, but had an inaccurate and incomplete understanding of the condition of the assets, the report said.

“Due diligence was not sufficiently robust and HMPPS severely underestimated the demand for reactive maintenance work arising from vandalism and failing assets.” HMPPS expected to pay providers £17.7m for variable costs by 2018-19 – the fourth year of the contracts – but has paid £160.4m, according to the latest findings.

The government has “struggled to create new prison places”, with only 206 built and 3,360 under construction out of 10,000 new for old places it committed to create in 2016.

“The main reason behind these failures was the delays in agreeing and receiving funding to build new prisons. This meant construction work began later than planned,” the report said.

It recommended that HMPPS develop a long-term strategy on condition standards and minimum levels of investment.

Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said: “The government has recently committed to creating 10,000 new prison places and needs to learn lessons from its recent experiences.”



The Ministry of Justice said it “recognised” the need to invest in maintenance and safety and pledged to spend £256m more to carry out improvements over the coming year.

A spokeswoman said: “We will always have enough prison places to keep offenders behind bars, and the government’s £2.5bn investment will create 10,000 modern places, on top of the two new jails already being built.”