A privately run child jail should be closed temporarily after high levels of assaults on staff and “staggering” use of force to control children, a report published today recommends.

Anne Owers, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, makes the unprecedented suggestion to close the jail after finding a lack of control and order at Oakhill secure training centre.

Teachers were visibly frightened of the children, young girls and boys were badly behaved and staff embattled at the centre, run by G4S, formerly Group 4, in Milton Keynes.

Youngsters were allowed to sprawl on bench tops to do their work and used offensive language unchecked by teachers. Force was used 757 times in nine months to control children, and on 532 occasions at least three members of staff were involved, including one holding a child’s head. There had been 377 assaults on staff in the first nine months of last year.

Staff lacked the skills to challenge the 48 children aged 13 to 17 at the centre, which moved out a quarter of its residents last year because of concerns about the lack of order and control on the premises.

Today’s report is the fourth, and most critical, highlighting significant weaknesses at Oakhill since it opened in 2004 on a 25-year contract.

Ms Owers said the scale of improving Oakhill was daunting, with staff turnover running at almost 60 per cent a year: “It might be more realistic to empty the centre briefly, so that it can be relaunched with a properly trained and reinvigorated staff, focused on plenty of good-quality, purposeful activity, dynamic security, and an emphasis on appropriate behaviour within clear boundaries.”

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