Permission granted for Yorkshire ‘mega jail‘

Plans for a new 1,440-capacity prison at Full Sutton in east Yorkshire have been approved by the local council.The new building, dubbed a ‘mega jail’ by locals opposing the project, will be the UK’s fifth largest when it opens in 2024.East Riding of Yorkshire Council granted outline planning permission for the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) scheme at a meeting last Thursday.The development is the first to be approved since Boris Johnson’s pledge last month to create 10,000 new prison places.Mace will oversee delivery of the project. The firm secured the role of project delivery partner for the ministry’s £1.3bn prison building programme in 2017.Mace is already working on a new prison at Wellingborough, being built by Kier, and Glen Parva, where Lendlease has been named as preferred bidder.A cost to build the new Full Sutton prison will only be known once contractors have submitted bids, the MoJ said.There has been local opposition to the new prison on the grounds that local infrastructure will not be able to cope and there are fears that it could lead to more crime in the area.More than 2,700 objections to the planning application were lodged with the council, including from local police.The new prison for category C prisoners will be built next to an existing 625-capacity maximum security prison on the Full Sutton site, which houses category A and B prisoners.Plans for a new 1,017-capacity prison at Full Sutton were initially approved in 2017, but the MoJ submitted plans for the new larger facility in December last year.