Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, which prisons in England and Wales currently have air conditioning installed for prisoners; and the cost of operating air conditioning in each of these prisons in the past year.

The following prisons have heating control systems installed in prisoner accommodation – HMPs:

• Channings Wood

• Erlestoke

• Eastwood Park

• East Sutton Park

• Ford

• Haverigg

• Holme House

• Hollesley Bay

• Huntercombe

• Littlehey

• Ranby

• Rochester

• Send

• Spring Hill

• The Mount

• The Verne

• Wayland

• Wymott

Across the prison estate, heating control systems are predominantly deployed in our Rapid Deployment Cells (individual living units which are joined together to form dedicated accommodation blocks) at some of our prisons. These units need independent heating solutions for a couple of key reasons: sometimes their location is separate from existing buildings, making it impossible for them to tap into the existing infrastructure, and in other cases, the current infrastructure simply is not able to support any additional accommodation.

To address these challenges, air source heat pumps have been implemented. Not only do these provide heating, but due to the construction and configuration of the Rapid Deployment Cells, a cooling function has also been incorporated which reduces potential for overheating in summer.

In our newly built prisons and houseblocks, the environment is controlled using a building management system which regulates the underfloor heating in cells and corridors. Prisoners are able to cool their cells, if needed, by operating the window vents to let fresh, cooler air in.

The costs of operating these control systems are included in the overall utility costs for each prison and cannot be separately identified.