National Preventive Mechanism Tenth Annual Report 2018–19 including at Wellingborough, which is due to open in 2021. Despite this investment, the Justice Select Committee highlighted a large backlog of major maintenance work in prisons. The Prisons Minister estimated in August 2018 that the current amount needed for major maintenance work in public prisons was £716 million, yet, for the year 2018–19, only £90 million was allocated towards it. In its subsequent report, the Committee reiterated a recommendation made by its predecessor Committee in 2017 to strengthen the statutory foundations of the Prison and Probation Ombudsman and National Preventive Mechanism.28 The Prison Service took over HMP Birmingham from G4S temporarily in August 2018 after an Urgent Notification issued by HM Inspectorate of Prisons; on 1 April 2019 it was announced that this transfer would be permanent. A High Court Judicial Review hearing against Sodexo Justice Services and the Secretary of State for Justice took place on 4 and 5 July 2018, following five incidents of unlawful strip-searching at HMP Peterborough the previous year.29 Sodexo Justice Services admitted systemic breaches in relation to Prison Service Instruction 07/2016 and Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)30, including not having adequately trained its staff in relation to strip searches. The Court found that measures put in place by the Secretary of State to safeguard stripsearching processes were not adequate and effective to prevent breaches of Article 8 ECHR by Sodexo because they did not ensure that proper and suitable systems were in place for training staff on stripsearching. The overuse of strip-searching at HMP Peterborough had been highlighted by HMI Prisons in its 2014 and 2017 inspection reports and the resulting reduction was then monitored and noted in the 2017–18 report from the IMB at the prison.31 28 House of Commons Justice Committee, April 2019, Prison population 2022: planning for the future sixteenth report of session 2017-19, https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmjust/483/483.pdf [accessed 04/12/19] 29 LW & Ors v Sodexo Ltd & Anor (Rev 1) [2019] EWHC 367 https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2019/367.html [accessed 04/12/19] 30 Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights is the right to respect for private and family life. 31 HMI Prisons, January 2018, Press release: 'Peterborough women's prison – respectful but undermined by deteriorating safety and concerns over force and strip-searching', https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprisons/media/pressreleases/2018/01/peterborough-womens-prison-respectful-but-undermined-by-deteriorating-safety-and-concerns-overforce-and-strip-searching/ [accessed 24/02/20]; Independent Monitoring Board at HMP/YOI Peterborough, August 2018, Annual Report of the Independent Monitoring Board at HMP/YOI Peterborough for reporting year April 2017–March 2018, https://s3-eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/imb-prod-storage-1ocod6bqky0vo/uploads/2018/08/Peterborough-2017-18.pdf [accessed 24/02/20] 20

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