News Release

30th April 2009

CURBOROUGH STILL A POSSIBLE SITE FOR 15OO INMATE PRISON

Michael Fabricant has sought clarification from the Ministry of Justice regarding the site of 5 new prisons, each holding 1500 inmates, announced by Jack Straw earlier this week.

Michael says: "The list of possible sites published under Freedom of Information regulations related to 3 so-called 'Titan' prisons each housing 2,500 prisoners. The list was compiled in May 2008. Earlier this week, Jack Straw said these would be replaced by 5 smaller prisons and announced the locations of two of them.

"Speaking to the Jack Straw's office this morning, I have been told that the 2008 list, which included Curborough, will be scrapped and a new list compiled of potential locations for the smaller prisons. This new list might well include Curborough again together with many more additional sites made possible because of the smaller size of the new prisons.

"I explained to the officials in the Ministry that a recent proposal for an eco-town which was supposed to have been on Fradley Airfield was, in fact, mainly to be developed on farming land and was totally unacceptable. I have now asked for information relating to the area of the new prisons and I will take soundings locally if a prison sited only on the old airfield and creating jobs in the area would be acceptable.