England and Wales will run out of space to jail criminals within the next three years, the prisons watchdog has said, with figures showing the number of spare cells has fallen below 1,000.
Charlie Taylor, chief inspector of prisons, saidt the government was already “scraping the barrel” in terms of places. Some regions have run out of space, with jails in the northwest transferring inmates to Birmingham prison.
The government has quietly dropped its pledge to build 20,000 cells by the middle of this decade. Fewer than half of these places will have been delivered by March 2025, according to Ministry of Justice projections. So far 5,400 have been provided, with a further 2,500 due by March 2025.
Plans for three new prisons in Lancashire,
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