(Alliance News) - A legal challenge has been launched against plans for G4S PLC to run a new mega-prison.
The UK Ministry of Justice last month picked the security company as its preferred choice to be awarded the contract for the new category C HMP Wellingborough in Northamptonshire. The jail cost GBP253 million to build and is set to hold 1,680 inmates.
Other companies vying for the job could contest the decision before it was confirmed.
According to the BBC, rival bidder MTC-Novo has launched a legal challenge against the Government over the commercial process for awarding the contract.
An MoJ spokesman said: "We have received a legal challenge relating to the operating contract for the new prison at Wellingborough.
"We continue to work closely with all parties and it would be inappropriate to comment further at this stage."
Building work began in September on the so-called mega-prison, which is due to open next year on the site of the former jail which closed in 2012.
The project is described as a flagship example of the UK government's aim to create a "modern, efficient prison estate that is fit for the future".
G4S was last year stripped of its contract for running Birmingham Prison seven years early.
The jail, one of the largest in the country, was taken back under state control having plunged into crisis under private management, according to a damning report by Chief Inspector of Prisons Peter Clarke.
His findings detailed scenes likened to a war zone in which inmates walked around "like zombies" while high on drugs and flouted the rules with impunity.
G4S also pulled out of running Brook House immigration removal centre near Gatwick Airport and the Medway secure training centre in Kent after BBC's Panorama programme broadcast undercover footage of inmates and detainees allegedly being mistreated.
But the company also runs four other prisons – Altcourse, Parc, Rye Hill and Oakwood – all of which have won praise from inspectors.
Just days after it emerged that G4S had won the Wellingborough contract, the company agreed to pay more than GBP38 million in fines over an electronic tagging fraud following a probe into its financial reporting to the MoJ.
source: PA
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