11 JUNE 1988, Page 27

Jail sale

THE goods yard at King's Cross now awaits Godfrey Bradman's developing hands, and another prison has boiled over. I hope that Mr Bradman will soon be offered eight more plum sites in and around London — unless, of course, he lets another developer have a turn. . . . The London prisons are sitting on more than 250 acres, in areas where values have been rising rapidly, and I argue (following George Hutchinson) for pulling them down and selling them up — building decent and practical prisons elsewhere to replace them. How far could the site values go to make that pay for itself? Chartered surveyors St Quintin have been kind enough to do the sums. These are for the sites only (assuming that there is nothing of value on them). They also include assump- tions about planning permission, not ex- pecting that all of the land would be available for development — no doubt there would have to be parks and gardens. That said, St Quintin's — necessarily round — figure is that the sites are likely to be worth between £185 and £190 million. You could build quite a lot with that kind of money. Make a start, perhaps, at Wandsworth, in modish SW11, which has been described by its own board of visitors as degrading and disgusting.