Council plugging £200k funding gap for prisoners
BRIDGEND County Borough Council is having to plug a £200k hole in funding to provide for the social care needs of prisoners at HMP Parc Prison due to a change in the way a grant from the Welsh Government is being administered.
Wales currently has five prisons – in Bridgend, Usk, Wrexham, Swansea and Cardiff.
When the Social Services and Wellbeing Act came into force in 2016, each local authority with a prison in its area received a two-year Welsh Government grant to help fund care and support for prisoners. In the first year Bridgend County Borough Council received £236k through the secure estate grant and last year it was given £217k.
But this year the local authority says it has received just £18k after the grant was shared out among all 22 local authorities rather than just the five with prisons.
It means BCBC has been left having to find the additional £203k it is expecting to spend.
Asked by Councillor Roz Stirman about the huge drop in funding at a full Bridgend Council meeting in June, cabinet member for social services Phil White said the council had made representations to the Welsh Government and the Distribution Sub Group (DSG) about the change in allocation.
He said: “DSG discussed the matter following representations but no change was made to the distribution methodology.”
Councillor Pam Davies asked BCBC’s director of social services Sue Cooper whether Bridgend was being treated “somewhat unfairly”.
Ms Cooper said it was “quite a commitment” for the council due to the unique nature of HMP Parc Prison – it is the largest prison in Wales, the only one that’s private and the prisoners there are long-term.
She said: “We have 1,800 prisoners in Bridgend and while the one in Wrexham will be bigger, it isn’t fully operational yet.
“Cardiff and Swansea both have remand prisons so prisoners are only there short-term before they’re moved on somewhere, and Usk is an open prison.
“In Bridgend, people are there for a long time because they have long sentences.
“There’s a number of prisoners who are deemed to be part of the older population so there are a number of social care needs.
“There are those who have needs associated with dementia and many have mental health learning disability issues, there’s a lot of complex issues.
“Therefore the requirement of us to meet the policy set out in the Social Services and Wellbeing Act probably is different from what’s required in the other prisons.”
A Welsh Government spokesman said local authorities had a statutory responsibility to provide social care for prisoners within the secure estate.
He said: “The decision to transfer the grant into the local government settlement responds to local authorities’ requests for greater flexibility to manage their resources.
“The distribution was agreed with local government through our partnership arrangements, taking into account the way in which prison populations are used in the overall formula.”