黑洞社区

The contractor, which carried out early design work on the juvenile offenders facility at Glen Parva, will have to bid for the job under a competitive tender.

The news comes as rival contractor Kier was tipped to pip Wates and Interserve to the long-awaited 拢150m Featherstone prison in Wolverhampton. A formal announcement is expected next week but 黑洞社区 understands the firm was given the 鈥渦nofficial nod鈥� at a meeting with the MoJ. The ministry said it would announce the winning contractor shortly.

Movement on the prisons programme will be welcomed by the industry, which has been hit by delays since the prison service drafted in civil servant John Aspinall to overhaul its procurement strategies last year.

Further uncertainty came in April, when the government announced it would scrap its 拢2.9bn Titan jail programme in favour of five smaller schemes.

Wates is understood to have taken the Glen Parva scheme to outline-proposal stage before it stalled. A source at the firm said the company never expected to get the full contract automatically.

The programme has been hit by delays since John Aspinall started to overhaul procurement

A source familiar with the situation said: 鈥淲ates was doing Glen Parva but then Aspinall was brought in and suddenly everything has to be competed for. I wouldn鈥檛 be surprised if all the big firms were going for it.鈥�

The MoJ spokesperson said it had held a bidders鈥� conference on 19 May followed by talks with contractors who had expressed an interest in the scheme.

Chris Booton, prison director for Wates, said: 鈥淲e鈥檙e delighted to be on the tender list.鈥�

In a separate announcement this week, the Scottish prison Service named Carillion preferred bidder ahead of Skanska on a 700-cell prison at Bishopbriggs in East Dunbartonshire.