Two months after the Home Office sold the prison ship HMP Weare, which had been criticised as “oppressive and cramped” by Ann Owers, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, an advertisement has been placed asking for bids for the contract to supply a new vessel.

The decision to find a new ship came yesterday as the Home Office announced that emergency measures to hold prisoners in police cells had come into force as jails in England and Wales approach capacity.

With a jail population of 79,825, 19 police forces are now ready to hold prisoners in up to 240 cells under Operation Safeguard, a spokeswoman said.

The cells are being used because jails in some parts of the country have reached breaking point although nationally the prison system is still not full.

Yesterday the Home Office confirmed that the crisis in the system was so severe that a new vessel holding between 200 and 800 prisoners was being sought. The inmates could either be low-level offenders or illegal immigrants facing deportation.

A spokeswoman for the Home Office said an advertisement was placed yesterday in the official journal of the EU where government contracts have to be publicised. She said that Mr Reid, the Home Secretary, had already made clear he wanted to explore “further solutions” in dealing with the prison population explosion.

Two weeks ago Mr Reid had to announce emergency measures to tackle the worsening overcrowding in prisons, which had left the service only 210 spaces short of being full.

Police were asked to prepare 500 cells in stations to deal with the overspill. The Home Secretary also announced plans to offer foreign prisoners a package worth up to £2,500 to help them to return home to serve their sentences.

The Home Secretary was forced to bring forward emergency action after a surge in the prison population to a record 79,843 — only 210 short of the number that the 139 jails in England and Wales can hold safely. The police cells are still available but the total prison population has dropped again.

The Weare, moored in Portland Harbour near Weymouth, closed last year, nine years after she opened as an emergency measure to deal with overcrowded jails.

Four hundred prisoners were held on the £15 million five-deck ship, which was the first to be used to house offenders since the Victorian hulks. The Category C jail held low-risk offenders with less than nine months of their sentence left.

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Science News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Catalogue of failings ‘leaves others at risk’
• Tourists told to stay away amid Venice floods
• Google generation has no need for rote learning