New prison planned for Chorley

The Ministry of Justice formally announced its plans to build a new prison in Chorley today when it published the public consultation notice – the deadline for responses is in 5 weeks (19 July 2021).

In following with its recent approach, the Government focuses on the economic benefits to the local area – jobs for building the prison and then employment for staffing it when complete, rather than the criminal justice rationale for building new prisons.

The Chorley prison is part of the Government’s ‘New Prisons Programme’, for which the Government has committed over £4 billion to make “significant progress” in creating 18,000 additional prison places across the prison estate by the mid-2020s, through a combination of new builds, as well as extending, refurbishing and maintaining other prisons.

The choice of Chorley is straightforward, the idea is to build the new prison on land next HMP Garth and just North of HMP Wymott. The fact that the M6 runs through Chorley will make access by road reasonably straightforward via Junction 28.

HMP Garth is a category B training prison situated near Leyland in Lancashire. It was originally opened in 1988, and is now part of the long-term and high-security estate. It holds around 800 prisoners, the vast majority of whom are serving sentences of more than 10 years and presented a high risk of harm. At the time of the last inspection (January 2019) around two-thirds of those prisoners had been convicted of serious violence and a quarter convicted of sexual offences.

HMP Wymott, located in central Lancashire, is a category C training prison for adult male prisoners and a small number of young adults. Prisoners arrive at Wymott from all areas of England and Wales, and primarily go to there to undertake offending behaviour work and other activities aimed at helping them to reduce their risks, progress to open prisons or prepare for release. In September 2020, the prison held 985 prisoners, about half of the prisoners had been convicted of sexual offences and a third were aged over 50. The prevalence of mental health problems and physical disabilities among the population was high.

The new prison at Chorley will be a Category C resettlement prison with seven separate prison blocks, with each block holding around 240 prisoners. The prison blocks will have 4 floors, with 60 prisoners on each. The projected overall capacity of the prison is 1,715. Plans also include polytunnels for gardening, and an outdoor family area that can be used by visitors and prisoners during visiting times.

The consultation document shows the Government’s commitment for a much more environmentally friendly prison building; aspirations include:

Reducing carbon emissions by 85% compared to other prisons by using energy efficient heat pumps, lighting, appliances and equipment.
The new prison will be all electric with no need for gas boilers or fossil fuels.
Green drains and water treatment to manage surface water.

It’s clear that new modern prisons such as HMP Chorley will provide much better living and working facilities for prisoners and the staff charged with their care, especially compared to our crumbling Victorian prisons such as Pentonville, Wandsworth and Wormwood Scrubs. Building such large prisons is economically attractive and newer prisons boast much cheaper financial costs per inmate.

However, many justice reformers voice strong opposition to these new super-sized “Titan” prisons which are notoriously difficult to run safely and inevitably mean that the majority of prisoners are held many miles from home, making family ties hard to maintain and resettlement plans difficult to achieve.

HMP Berwyn, the most recent Titan prison to be opened in 2017, has suffered from a range of teething problems with its population still substantially under its planned capacity. In June last year there were 1,731 prisoners out of a planned total of 2,106.