HMP Blantyre House has been closed since January 2016 and has not reopened; it holds no prisoners and there are no published HMPPS plans to recommission it. Its last HM Inspectorate of Prisons report, from an inspection in September 2013, is set out below for the record, together with the links to read it in full.
Before its closure, HMP Blantyre House was a semi-open resettlement prison in Goudhurst, Kent, holding around 120 long-term and life-sentenced men nearing release, notable for allowing selected prisoners to hold outside jobs and their own cars under a strict zero-tolerance regime on drugs and fighting. The 2013 inspection found staff-prisoner relationships still excellent, a decent physical environment, good healthcare, and low rates of self-harm, assault and abscond compared with the rest of the estate, with some prisoners achieving good outcomes through release on temporary licence.
Set against this, inspectors found outcomes had declined since a strongly positive inspection in 2010, when the prison was described as one of the best in the country. By 2013 the resettlement focus had weakened, with limited employment and training opportunities inside and some prisoners unable to use release on temporary licence for want of travel funds. The synthetic drug “Spice” was becoming increasingly available and went undetected by the drug tests then in use, contributing to debt, bullying and intimidation, and violent incidents had risen compared with the previous inspection and with similar prisons. The prison’s admission criteria had also been widened, bringing in a broader range of risk and need than its traditional resettlement model had been designed to manage.
The prison’s governor was removed amid a security scare in 2000, and it experienced a prolonged operational decline through the 2000s before HMPPS announced its closure “for refurbishment” in January 2016. It has remained closed, unused and increasingly dilapidated ever since, with the Ministry of Justice citing the disproportionate cost of refurbishing a site with only around 120 places.
To read the full reports, go to the HM Inspectorate of Prisons website or follow the links below:
- HMP Blantyre House, Report on an unannounced inspection of HMP Blantyre House (9–20 September 2013)
- HMP Blantyre House, Report on an announced inspection of HMP Blantyre House (5–9 July 2010)