Prisons: Rural Areas
Home Department
Tom Watson (West Bromwich East, Labour)
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he has assessed the merits of providing short-term temporary cells in rural areas.
Gerry Sutcliffe (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office; Bradford South, Labour)
holding answer
The National Offender Management Service has investigated a wide range of potential temporary accommodation to increase capacity. Part of the 8,000 place capacity-building programme includes ready built modular accommodation which has an expected life span of 10 to 25 years. The early stages of the programme are using land on existing prison sites. Some of these are in rural areas.