Warrington Residents Against Prison Proposal

On Friday 20th February, a group of residents took the 10,000+ name petition to be handed over to the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street.

A big thankyou to all who have signed and all who collected petitions.

Below, you can see the residents with the petitions, ready to hand over.

Petitions and residents at 10 Downing Street - Click for full size

Some of you may have received an email from Number 10 if you signed the online petition.  For those who didn’t receive a response, here it is:

Thank you for your petition, on behalf of the Great Sankey North Residents Association, opposing the building of a prison cluster (formerly known as a Titan) on the Omega site in Warrington.

The Government is implementing a 20,000 place building programme to expand the prison estate, including up to three prison clusters.  We have said that it makes sense to locate them where the demand for prison places is greatest, so we are looking at sites in the North West, as well as the West Midlands and London areas.  Security will be the cornerstone of any prison development, no matter where it takes place. It is not unusual for prisons to be located near to local communities, and there is no evidence of which we are aware to indicate that the building of new prisons increases local crime rates or places the safety of local residents at risk.

We also believe that a strong case for the economic benefit for the local area can be made for the building of a new prison, wherever the site, and our experience of similar projects has demonstrated the benefits a prison can bring to a local and regional community.   Building a new large prison has the potential to benefit its local economy by around £15 million a year and create 1,000 jobs directly.

We have yet to confirm our interest in specific sites, and the Omega site in Warrington is one of a number which are under consideration in the North West.  Once sites are identified, we intend to follow the normal planning route, and will make an application for planning permission to the appropriate local planning authority.

Before we submit any planning application, National Offender Management Service officials will hold pre-application consultations with planning officers, local councillors and other interested parties on the detail of the proposed prison development in the usual way.  This will include a public exhibition to explain the proposals and give local people the opportunity to comment.

Don’t believe all the nonsence that you hear about jobs for the local community and this being a good investment for the area.  Don’t be blinded by figures or false promises.  Bear in mind that most of the jobs that would get “created” will be transfers from other prisons, as the nature of this job means that they will require highly-skilled, experienced, pre-trained staff.  This doesn’t fit with the original Omega vision of creating 25,000 jobs.

Keep your emails coming - you can contact us here.

Thanks to everyone who has signed one of our petitions - whether it’s the online one or otherwise.

In total we’ve collected in excess of an astounding 10,000 signatures and each and every one of these will be taken to 10 Downing Street by a group of residents this Friday, 20th February, and handed over to the Prime Minister.

Thanks again to everyone who has signed and supported us so far.  We’ll have more details on the handover coming soon.