Sell up the London Jails

By GEORGE HUTCHINSON

TN tackling London's new housing programme, IMr. Richard Crossman, thoroughgoing as ever, has undoubtedly contemplated all sorts of ways in which he might gain more space for building. The scarcity of available land, the Most valuable and elusive of all commodities in London and other large cities, has plagued every Minister of Housing in recent years. Countless suggestions, some of them novel, many of them more or less fanciful, have been put to suc- cessive ministers, and nearly all have encountered some paralysing objection. Yet there is one proposal, I think, that has not been considered, one answer which Mr. Crossman and the present Cabinet, like their predecessors, have almost certainly overlooked.

By a single decision the Government could release a huge acreage of metropolitan land. Mr. Crossman should turn his eyes and his mind to the London jails. These jails take up an altogether extravagant amount of some of the most valuable land in Britain. To be exact, they take up 257* acres.

From the Home Office 1 have obtained an

account of Prison Department establishments in the London area:

acres

Brixton Prison ..

121

Holloway Prison ..

121

Pentonville Prison

10

Wandsworth Prison

38+

Wormwood Scrubs Prison

36

Ashford Remand Centre ..

46+ Latchmere Detention Centre (Ham Common) 7} Feltham Borstal .. 931 Total ..

Why should these jails stand where they are for ever? Above all, why should we main- tain prisons in such densely populated and under-housed neighbourhoods as Brixton, Hol- loway, Pentonville, Wandsworth and Wormwood Scrubs? There is no reason whatever why the Prison Department should continue to occupy all this particular land. Most of it could be sold up and made over to housing. Of course, I do not suggest that every single jail should be moved somewhere else: London requires some prison accommodation, but it need be no more than a fraction of all this. Most of the prisons Could be re-established in the countryside, and sometimes on islands around the coast. From the sale of the land a hefty sum would accrue to the Exchequer and could go towards the con- struction of new and better jails more sensibly located.

Assuming planning permission for develop- ment in tall blocks, with every acre housing 100 to 150 people, homes for more than 25,000 —perhaps 35,000—could be built in the London area.

I have taken advice on the value of these prison acres. Sir Arnold Silverstone, an experienced judge of property, tells me that Brixton, Hollo- w aY, Pentonville, Wandsworth and Wormwood Scrubs, covering in all 110 acres, would prob- ably sell for £50,000 an acre, making a total of 45.5 million. The Ashford Remand Centre and the Feltham Borstal, together occupying 140 acres, could fetch £30,000 an acre, bringing in £4.2 million. The Latchmere Detention Centre at Ham Common is probably worth £60,000 an acre, making a further £435,000. There is nothing

extravagant in Sir Arnold's estimates; they are, if anything, rather conservative; for, as he re- minds me, the average price being paid in the Greater London Council area, according to the recent LCC Housing Report, is some £60,000 an acre.

However, it is the prospective windfall in land that really counts. Here is an opportunity for Mr. Crossman, if he can first persuade the Home Secretary and then the rest of the Cabinet to support him.