Opening of segregation unit at a jail which once housed Reggie Kray was delayed due to ‘unbelievable’ mix-up where ‘everyone wrongly thought someone else was procuring the locks for the cells’, report reveals
- The 30-cell segregation unit at HMP Wayland meant to open at the end of 2021
- A report revealed the opening was delayed because of a locks and keys mix-up
- Report stated ‘everyone thought someone else was procuring the locks for cells’
The opening of a new segregation until at a jail where Reggie Kray was once an inmate was delayed because of an ‘unbelievable’ mix-up over purchase of locks and keys.
The confusion at HMP Wayland, near Thetford, Norfolk, was revealed in a report of the Independent Monitoring Board overseeing the Category C men’s prison.
The 30-cell segregation unit was meant to be opened at the end of 2021 but was still unfinished at the time of the report, written last May but only recently published.
The monitoring board said: ‘Unbelievably, everyone wrongly thought someone else was procuring the locks for the cells and the building.
‘The locking delay, we have been informed, will be further exacerbated by expected post-pandemic supply issues: the go-to blame-frame for delays it seems.’
The confusion at HMP Wayland, near Thetford, Norfolk, was revealed in a report of the Independent Monitoring Board overseeing the Category C men’s prison
Former East End gangster Reggie Kray spent the last three years of his incarceration for murder at Wayland, between 1997 and 2000
The board said other delays to the opening of the new unit involved construction of an access road and ‘issues over telephone system capacity’.
The monitoring board said delays to opening the facility at the jail, which holds over 1,000 inmates, were disappointing because the new unit was designed with twice as many cells as the existing one.
The previous 15-cell unit had been branded ‘shabby’ in a previous report, with inspectors the showers were dirty, cells were bare and that there was no in-cell electricity.
The new unit opened last summer, more than a year late.
A source told the Daily Mirror: ‘You’d think if you were building new cells, locks and keys would be fairly high up the to-do list. It beggars belief that the project continued for so long without this in hand.’
Former East End gangster Reggie Kray spent the last three years of his incarceration for murder at Wayland, between 1997 and 2000, when he was released on compassionate grounds due to terminal cancer. He died later that year.
A spokesman for the Prison Service said the issues with the locks and keys had now been ‘resolved’ and the unit was now open.
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