The Parole Board has postponed recommending whether Ronnie Biggs should be released from jail in the summer in a wrangle over who should pay for round-the-clock medical care for the Great Train Robber.

Members of the board were unable to make a decision on Biggs’s application because no suitable nursing home had been identified to accommodate him. Officials at Barnet Primary Care Trust in North London have refused to pay for the 24-hour care he will require for the rest of his life. It had been hoped that he would move to the area as his son Michael lives in the district.

Negotiations are now taking place to find funding to provide care for Biggs who, after suffering a series of strokes, is unable to speak and communicates through gestures and spelling out words with letters of the alphabet. He is fed through a tube in the stomach and can walk only a few steps unaided.

Once arrangements for his care are agreed, the Parole Board is expected to recommend his release from the hospital wing of Norwich prison in July in time for Biggs to celebrate his 80th birthday on August 8 — the 46th anniversary of the robbery.

Times Archive, 1965: Train trial man escapes

Ronald Arthur Biggs, serving 30 years, escaped yesterday afternoon from Wandsworth gaol with three other convicts

• Archive Topic: The Great Train Robbery

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The final decision on whether Biggs will spend his last years in freedom rests with Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary.

Giovanni di Stefano, Biggs’s legal adviser, said: “For parole to be granted, Mr Biggs has to have an address where he can reside.

“In his case he requires 24-hour medical nursing care. The decision as to who pays for his care, whether it be the Barnet health authority or Norfolk or any other authority, and his actual nursing home where he will be paroled to has yet to be decided.”

Michael Biggs said he hoped that his father, whom he visits regularly, would be released.

The probation officer overseeing Biggs has recommended his early release after serving ten years of the 30-year jail term imposed in 1964 for his part in the £2.5 million — £40 million at today’s prices — robbery of the Glasgow to London mail train.

Documents seen by The Times show that the officer is urging release even though she believes he has “no regrets” about his life. The probation officer’s report said he was “suitable for early release on parole licence to a suitable provision with a full care package to manage his health needs”.

The document notes that Biggs has in the past sought to play on his celebrity status, which could lead to an issue of “risk management” on his release.

Any move to free Biggs is likely to prove controversial given his role in one of the most notorious and audacious robberies of the 20th century and his life of indolence in Brazil during 36 years on the run.

Biggs served only 15 months of his sentence before escaping by scaling a 30ft wall. He went to France, Australia and Brazil, where he lived openly for three decades, safe from extradition because he had fathered a child by a Brazilian woman. He returned to Britain in 2001, impoverished and ill. His son was given British citizenship after his parents married in Belmarsh jail, southeast London in 2002.

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