• Home /
• Statewatch Database /
• UK: Group 4 to run secure training centre

UK: Group 4 to run secure training centre

01 September 1998

Within weeks of a Belgian police investigation into allegations of corruption against Group 4 security guards over a £50 million European Commission contract, the Home Office has announced that a consortium led by Group 4 has been awarded a contract to design, build, manage and finance the controversial new secure training centre (STC) at Onley, Northamptonshire.

The new STC, which is scheduled to open in May 1999, will be the second of five centres; the first, at Medway, Kent, saw a "riot" shortly after it opened in April (see Statewatch Vol. 8 no 3 & 4). STCs were vehemently opposed by Tony Blair and the Labour Party while in opposition, and have been strenuously criticised by penal reform groups for their lack of staff training and accountability.

In Belgium the Commission's internal anti-fraud unit, Unite de la Lutte Anti-Fraude (UCLAF), has published a report alleging that Group 4 employed up to 20 "ghost" workers on their payroll, many of them friends or relatives of Commission officials. The investigation, which threatens "to become a major scandal for the Commission", centres around a 1992 contract to supply 600 security guards; the company was replaced by a Belgian firm last year. The UCLAF report has been passed to the public prosecutor in Brussels.

Britain's first high-tech private prison, Parc prison in south Wales, which had two suicides and eight disturbances in its first six months, has been fined £105,000 for failure to meet minimum standards. A fine of £54,700 was imposed on Securicor for failings at the prison in February and a further £51,900 for incidents in May. The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee was critical of operational failings at the prison after being told that too few staff were employed when it opened last November and that custody officers lacked experience.

Independent 5.7.98; Home Office press release 8.7.98; Guardian 29.7.98.