The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has put aside £1.1bn of contracts to restart stalled projects in its prison building programme – including two major ex-ISG jobs.
The cash is meant to get 14 construction work packages up and running at 32 prisons and courts across the UK under the ministry’s Contingency Response Programme (CRP), Construction News can reveal.
So far, the MoJ has appointed contractors on £684.3m-worth of jobs from the £1.1bn package.
ISG’s collapse last September stalled major projects across the UK – including MoJ prison revamps at HMP Birmingham, HMP Liverpool and HMP Guys Marsh.
The £2.2bn-turnover contractor was also working on multiple expansion projects at other prisons and MoJ sites as part of the additional 20,000 prison places delivery programme.
The MoJ has now appointed at least seven major contractors to take on some of that work, including ISG’s £150.7m job to build new houseblocks at HMP Birmingham, which has gone to Galliford Try.
The CRP also includes some prison and court maintenance works which have no link to ISG. CN understands the CRP will include at least 14 packages of work.
Over the past three months, the MoJ has awarded contracts worth a combined £684.3m to Bovis Construction, Willmott Dixon, Galliford Try, Bowmer & Kirkland, Tilbury Douglas, Henry Boot Construction and Henry Brothers.
No data is available on three of the CRP packages (1, 12 and 13) and work on at least seven packages is yet to be handed out – including five where work should have started in March (see full list of projects below).
Those include two of ISG’s flagship prison projects. The £149.3m job to build new houseblocks at HMP Guys Marsh (pictured) does not yet have a contractor – and also includes funds to upgrade utilities including sewage screening, showers, CCTV, fire mains and district heating at HMPs Dartmoor, Bullingdon, Leyhill and Channings Wood.
The MoJ is also yet to name a contractor on a £121.1m job to build houseblocks at HMP Liverpool, as well as work on accommodation blocks, fire safety work, wall repairs and damp proofing at HMPs Wymott, Erlestoke, Risley and Preston.
It is not clear how long it will take to contract out the additional projects. The MoJ declined to comment when CN asked for information on the CRP projects that had not been tendered out yet.
As well as being awarded the HMP Birmingham job, Galliford Try will also complete additional minor works across HMPs Prescoed, Sudbury, Swaleside, Cardiff, Swansea and Usk as part of the £150.7m contract.
The contractor scooped the project last month, and the contract will come to an end in February 2030.
Following ISG’s collapse last year, the MoJ “actioned its contingency response” to work out how much construction work had been completed on each of its projects – with the aim of restarting work “as soon as possible”, the MoJ said in detailed tender documents.
It warned that ISG’s collapse came “at a time when prison and court capacity, including protection of existing capacity and creation of new capacity, remains critical”.
Among the biggest contracts already handed out are a £237.5m job awarded to Bovis Construction to deliver new housing blocks at HMPs Hatfield, Leyhill, Ford and Standford Hill. Bovis started work on the project last month, and has until January 2029 to finish the work.
Bowmer & Kirkland, meanwhile, was awarded a £154m job in June to refurbish two wings at HMP Wymott, alongside some maintenance works at HMPs Coldingley, Kirkham and Foston Hall. Work is set to finish in December 2027.
Tilbury Douglas snapped up a £64.5m job to complete “design and construction works at multiple unnamed prison and court sites across England, where securing and expanding capacity has been deemed urgent”. The contract runs until June 2031.
Henry Brothers also scooped a £13.3m job – package 11 – but it is not clear from the government procurement documents which prisons it will be working on. The contract will run from 10 June 2025 to 30 September 2027. CN approached Henry Brothers for comment, but did not hear back by the time of publication.
CRP categories
The MoJ has divided the CRP projects into three categories, with categories two and three focusing on jobs that ISG was working on before it went under.
Category two covers jobs where ISG had completed between 10 and 50 per cent of the design work, according to the MoJ.
ISG jobs where design work was completed and construction work had commenced, meanwhile, are in category three. That suggests jobs including its expansion projects at Liverpool, Guys Marsh and Birmingham are all in category three.
Rather than a standard fixed-price contract, contractors appointed to former ISG jobs will receive “cost reimbursable contracts”, covering all the project costs they incur plus an additional fee.
The MoJ also detailed the process moving forward for the former ISG jobs. Contractors appointed to them will need to start with a “validation stage” to establish what work can be done without additional design work and to inspect all the construction work that has been completed.
Category one jobs include jobs that ISG was not involved in.
A spokesperson for the MoJ said the government had already delivered 2,500 new prison spaces with 14,000 others scheduled for delivery by 2031 in “the largest expansion of prison places since the Victorian era.”
They added: “We have launched a procurement process and are moving forward with new suppliers.”
Galliford Try, Henry Boot and Willmott Dixon declined to comment.
CN also approached Bovis Construction, Bowmer & Kirkland, Tilbury Douglas and Henry Brothers for comment.