£9 million scheme to improve fire safety at Gartree Prison is set to go ahead

A crucial £9 million scheme to urgently improve fire safety at Gartree Prison is set to go ahead.

Ministry of Justice (MoJ) bosses are aiming to overhaul and upgrade the jail near Market Harborough over the next 14 months.

And the critical new initiative is being backed by the 56-year-old prison’s watchdog chef Tim Norman.

The MoJ has drawn up plans to replace six old staircases in three wings, put in new fire alarms, install a better smoke extraction system and modernise ventilation.

A Prison Service spokesperson said: “As part of our ongoing work to make prisons safer we are carrying out important upgrades at HMP Gartree.”

Contractors are also being tasked to install a new emergency power supply system if the Category-B jail suffers a sudden black-out.

The MoJ said the catalogue of work will be carried out by October 2022 if its gets the planning go-ahead from Harborough District Council.

Tim Norman, 71, chair of Gartree Prison’s Independent Monitoring Board (IMB), said the improvements won’t come a minute too soon for the 636 inmates they support and scores of staff.

“We warmly welcome any new moves to improve Gartree jail.

“This work is long over-due.

“I agree that Gartree needs to be upgraded in many different areas,” Tim told the Harborough Mail today.

“A lot of vital work has already been done here to improve fire safety.

“I’m pleased that real progress is being made on this front.

“There is a lot of work to be done at Gartree, as I’ve made clear many times before,” said Tim.

“This is an old building dating back to the mid-1960s – and it’s been showing its age for some years now.

“So this new scheme will be a great start in improving the very fabric of the prison.

“It’s going to make life so much better and safer for over 600 inmates as well as the staff who work here.

“Everyone’s a winner.

“The rooves of the wings and the shower blocks are all pretty poor and need urgent attention.

“I look forward to this situation being remedied as well,” said Tim, who lives near Market Harborough.

“We’ve had a leak in one of the kitchens but that’s now been fixed.

“Just like our homes Gartree jail needs maintenance too as well as being modernised and hauled into the 21st century.”

He said that his IMB team is now returning to work in the all-male prison after being forced out by the Covid pandemic for over a year.

“It’s huge to be starting to get back into swing of things at last.

“We had to leave in March last year before returning temporarily last September,” said Tim, the former head of logistics at the RSPB.

“But we soon had to move out again as cases went back up.

“And we have really missed that day-to-day contact and inter-action with both prisoners and staff.

“There are still some Covid limitations, of course, but the inmates are pleased that we’re back.

“And it’s a sign that we are finally returning to something like normality.

“We are also taking on new recruits and will be up to nine members of our IMB team in the next few weeks.

“So we’ll be up to full strength and that’s very encouraging as we set out to work with both inmates and staff as well and as constructively as we can,” said Tim.