The Ministry of Justice has announced an extra £110 million to accelerate prison building and secure new sites for future jails, as part of what it calls the largest prison-building programme since Victorian times. The government says it has already delivered 3,200 new prison places in its first two years and is aiming for 14,000 extra spaces by 2031, including a new 1,700-place prison in Lancashire.
Lord Chancellor Alex Norris said the government was “serious about fixing the broken prison system we inherited” and wanted to get “spades in the ground quicker”. The announcement, made on 1 September, also included £18.9 million in extra funding for victim support services, part of a wider £550 million investment in victim services over three years.
The building programme sits alongside sentencing reforms intended to keep the most dangerous offenders in custody for longer, faster removal of foreign national offenders, and planned changes to Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentences.
Not everyone is convinced more capacity is the answer on its own – see our report on the Prison Reform Trust’s response to the same announcement.
Source: GOV.UK, 1 September 2026