Ford Prison could see its prisoner capacity increase by 420 spaces according to plans from the Ministry of Justice.
Plans for seven new houseblocks, property storage for prison officers, a healthcare unit, offender management unit, multi-faith unit, a dry goods kitchen storage and a car park with 80 spaces have been submitted by the MoJ to Arun District Council.
The plans, submitted by real estate services firm Cushman and Wakefield on behalf of the MoJ, said that new houseblocks would replace existing ones but would create 420 additional bed spaces.
The expansion is part of a £5.2 billion national prison building programme from the MoJ and the Prison and Probation Service announced in 2022, with the aim of creating 20,000 more prison places by the mid 2020s.
Ford Prison is part of the second and final phase for the planned 1,320 extra category D prison spaces, being the largest of the planned category D expansions.
Other prisons seeing expansions in phase two include four houseblocks at Stanford Hill, creating 240 spaces, and two houseblocks at Leyhill, creating 120 spaces.
The plans said that in October last year more than 88,000 people were imprisoned in the UK and that prisons had a total maximum capacity of 88,980.
Reports this week suggested that fewer than 100 spaces for men were left in the entire prison estate.
Last October, this meant that 99 per cent of Britain’s prison capacity was being used, with 60 per cent of prisons being overcrowded.
The MoJ said that this was being “primarily” driven by government reform to the criminal justice system, increased sentence lengths, prisoners on extended remand and recalls to prison, and courts recovering from the covid-19 pandemic and industrial action.
Ford had plans approved in 2022 to increase its capacity by 120 spaces, amid a forecast by the MoJ of “unprecedented” prisoner numbers over the next decade.
The new healthcare unit and houseblocks would be three storeys high while the other new buildings would all be one storey.
The plans said that the proposals would aim to be “as close to net zero as possible”, with contractors aiming to divert 95 per cent of waste during construction away from landfill.
The plans also said that the extension would see a 10 per cent biodiversity net gain to the site and would see an additional 25 staff employed during construction.
