The justice secretary has indicated that the government will override local objections to the construction of new prisons in England.
Shabana Mahmood accepted reports that the justice department would be able to fast-track applications, giving officials the power to bypass councils who normally decide on planning applications, even if the planned prisons are to be built on green belt land.
The deputy prime minister and housing secretary, Angela Rayner, would have the final say over new prison buildings as officials would submit their plans straight to the planning inspectorate, which sits in Rayner’s housing department. They could be given the go-ahead in 16 weeks.
Asked about concerns people may have about a prison being built near their homes, Mahmood told BBC Breakfast: “What I would say to your viewers is of more concern is when the nation runs out of prison places. You know, you have to pull emergency levers, as I had to when I first came into office, to make sure that there’s enough space in our prisons … We have to be honest about the fact that prison building is required.”
Responding to reports on the government’s ability to override local objections, she replied: “Yes, our manifesto commitment was that we consider prisons to be of national importance … These are critical infrastructure projects, they are absolutely necessary to make sure the country doesn’t run out of prison places.”
Mahmood acknowledged the prisons would run out of space despite the government’s proposals to build extra places, and said the prison estate was facing a “sad situation” as demand was still rising faster than any supply could catch up with.
She said the government had already committed to investing “record sums of money” that still would not be enough, so it was changing its plans to tackle the prison overcrowding crisis.
Asked whether the estate would run out of cells within three years, even with 14,000 extra places, she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We will run out because even all of that new supply, with the increase in prison population that we will see as a result of that new supply, doesn’t help you with the rise in demand, because demand is still rising faster than any supply could catch up with.”
Wider planning changes are to be announced on Thursday.
The government has so far promised to build four new prisons, within the next seven years, and find a total of 14,000 cell spaces in prisons by 2031.
Some of the spaces will be in newly built prisons, but others will be found through various other ways, including building new wings at existing prisons or refurbishing cells that are currently out of order.
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) said prisons would be deemed sites of “national importance” amid efforts to prevent lengthy planning delays, and new land will be bought for future prisons.
The National Audit Office (NAO) has said the government’s plans to increase prison capacity could fall short by thousands of cell spaces within two years.
The NAO said that until there was greater coherence between the government’s wider policy agenda and funding for its prison estate, the current crisis position would not represent value for money.
Since September, thousands of inmates have been freed early to ease the overcrowding crisis, as the length of their sentence that some prisoners must serve behind bars in England and Wales has been temporarily reduced from 50% to 40%.
The justice secretary said the government would not be announcing any more emergency prison releases “of the kind seen this year”.
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