Government locked into £4m-a-year spending on ‘unusable’ prison
The Government is spending £4 million a year on the upkeep of an “unusable” prison which currently holds no inmates, MPs have revealed.
HMP Dartmoor was shut down in August 2024 after abnormal levels of radioactive radon gas had been detected at the jail in Princetown, Devon.
More than 600 inmates had to be relocated from the category C facility, adding to the national crisis around the shortage of prison places.
It has now been revealed that the Ministry of Justice, through the HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS), is locked into £4 million a year of rental and security costs for the shuttered jail, potentially lasting for the next eight years.
It is also committed to paying out around £68 million for “fabric improvements” to the prison over the course of the lease, which ends in 2033.
“HMPPS’s failure to negotiate a good deal when it renewed the lease on HMP Dartmoor in March 2022 means it is now spending £4 million of taxpayers’ money a year on rent, rates and security for a prison it cannot use,” a report from the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee revealed on Wednesday.
“This arrangement will continue until either the prison can be reoccupied or it can end the lease in 2033.”
MPs also accused the prison service of failing to “have a plan for when the prison will be back in use”.
“Given HMPPS knew that radon was at the site before signing the lease, it was a very poor commercial decision not to negotiate a financial safeguard in the event that it needed to partially or fully close the prison due to radon levels.”
Parliament heard in evidence sessions last year that high levels of radon were first detected at the Grade II listed jail in 2020.
The prison service argued that the new lease had to be signed due to the pressure for prison places, which in 2022 was already at crisis levels.
It agreed to £1.5 million in annual rent, and did not negotiate the possibility of early departure from the lease ahead of December 2033.
“We do not accept that the prison capacity crisis excuses such poor commercial decisions, which have resulted in this needless waste of taxpayers’ money,” said the committee’s report.
It urged justice officials to “set out what it has learned from the failures of its decision making and contract management of the HMP Dartmoor lease negotiations, and how it will ensure that any future contracts deliver value for money”.
The MPs, led by committee chairman Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, said the MoJ had set out its ambition to bring HMP Dartmoor back into use, but found “no clear plans for how and when they will do this”.
The Health and Safety Executive is currently investigating the radon levels, and a decision on reopening the jail must wait until after the results have been delivered.
It has also been revealed that £1.2 million has been spent so far by the MoJ on radon mitigation works, but that effort has been halted until the findings of the HSE investigation are known.
In September last year, legal action was launched against the prison service by a collection of staff, inmates, and former prisoners at HMP Dartmoor, alleging they were wrongly exposed to high levels of radon.
The odourless and colourless gas forms from decaying uranium, and can lead to illnesses including lung cancer.
The Ministry of Justice has been contacted for comment.
Published: by Radio NewsHub