DAVID BLUNKETT is planning two super-size jails each holding 1,500 inmates in a huge building programme to cope with the soaring prison population.

The two jails, the biggest to be built in modern penal history, are part of a planned package of six new prisons providing 5,400 spaces.

The rising number of people being imprisoned has also forced the prison service to abandon, for the time being, any plans to close uneconomic Victorian inner city jails and sell the sites to developers.

The Home Secretary’s ambitious proposals come as prison numbers are starting to rise again, having fallen from the record 74,012 reached in July. Last Friday the population of the 138 prisons in England and Wales was 73,802, a rise of almost 250 in a week.

The proposal for two super jails is disclosed in the future investment strategy of Mr Blunkett’s department. It wants to spend millions of pounds on two sites, one of which is certain to be near London and the other in the Midlands.

“£32 million of the programme in 2004-2005 is for the purchase of two sites for large, multi-functional prisons (1,500 place local prisons),” the strategy document said.

In addition to the new super jails, planning permission has been given for two, 600-space jails on a site next to the existing Belmarsh Prison in Woolwich, southeast London, and at Ashworth, near Maghull on Merseyside.

The Home Office is also pressing for a further two, 600-place jails, bringing to 5,400 the total number of spaces in planned new jails.

Mr Blunkett has not received the funds to build any of the new jails and his demand for additional prisons will form a key part of tough negotiations with the Treasury in the next comprehensive spending review.

But Home Office officials are already involved in intense discussions with the Treasury to get permission to begin the tendering process for the 600-place jails in Woolwich and Ashworth. The plan to go to tender without having the money from the Treasury was described in Whitehall last night as “highly unusual”, but it reflects the urgent need for more jail accommodation.

Plans to go ahead with the 1,500-place jails are contingent on the Prison Service agreeing to Treasury proposals that it close at least one large Victorian inner-city jail.

But the Home Office investment document admits that prison overcrowding and the rising jail population makes this virtually impossible. It said: “However, in the current climate of an increasing prison population, it is unlikely that any prisons could be closed.”

Instead it said that the Prison Service’s plan is to minimise investment in prisons that have the least long-term strategic value.

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