It’s all gone Pete Tong! Queen is landlady of jail turned rave club
Prison officers hit out at £8.5m windfall for Royal estate as cells are emptied
THE Queen has become the unlikely landlady of a nightclub in a disused prison, after it was emptied of inmates at huge public cost. All-night raves are held regularly at the venue within the walls of Lancaster Castle, giving a new meaning to the phrase ‘at Her Majesty’s pleasure’.
Top DJs including Radio 1’s Pete Tong – whose name is rhyming slang for ‘wrong’ – and the appropriately named Rob da Bank have performed on the old landings of the jail, now known as ‘A-Wing’, while revellers can dance inside the cells.
It can also be revealed that although the 800-year-old prison was shut down to cut costs, the Queen was quietly handed £8.5million of taxpayers’ money when the contract ended as it is part of her vast portfolio of land and property known as the Duchy of Lancaster.
Last night, questions were raised over the decision to close the Category C jail. Glyn Travis of the Prison Officers’ Association told The Mail on Sunday: ‘It was a perfectly well-ordered and wellrun prison. That £8.5million could have been invested in the prison service. The fact that it’s now a nightclub demonstrates it was never going to be used for anything in the public interest like a library. It’s only going to be used to make money.’
Frances Crook, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said: ‘The Ministry of Justice has announced it’s looking at selling off Victorian prisons, but the fiasco of Lancaster Castle shows that’s a tricky proposition as other prisons are owned by Royalty or trusts. You can’t sell what you don’t own.’
Lancaster Castle is one of the oldest and most important buildings in the Duchy of Lancaster, the centuries-old estate that provides the sovereign with huge amounts of private income.
The castle was first used as a prison as far back as the 12th Century, while hundreds of people were hanged after trials there, including the Pendle witches in 1612. In 1975 it held the trials of the Birmingham Six, who were accused of pub bombings, and 11 people in the ‘handless corpse’ case of 1981.
The prison itself, HMP Lancaster Castle, is thought to have been one of the oldest penal establishments in the world. It was well regarded for its rehabilitation services and had a £1 million healthcare centre.
But in March 2011 it was closed down by the Ministry of Justice on the grounds that a medieval castle provided outdated and expensive accommodation for its 230 inmates.
Ministers said the move would save money but it was never made clear that the closure involved paying out millions to the Duchy to cover rent and repairs.
Emails obtained by The Mail on Sunday under the Freedom of Information Act reveal the tense negotiations between civil servants and the Duchy, which also wanted VAT payments. A senior prison service official said in one message: ‘It has already been very challenging for me to apportion additional sums in order to justice a settlement at £8.5million – and you will see that VAT and other liabilities, including a massive £1.55million apportioned for “risk” elements… are included in the spreadsheet.’
A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: ‘The Coalition Government closed outdated and expensive prisons to help build a secure and fit-for-purpose prison estate which provides value for the taxpayer. The early surrender of the lease and closure of Lancaster Castle saved £18million in running costs.’