The installations are expected to cut more than 1,300 tonnes of carbon from the earth’s atmosphere and provide 20% of each prison’s electricity – a significant saving as the gworks towards its ambitious net-zero target and a move that will save around £800,000 a year.

In total over 16,000 new ground mounted panels will be switched on across the prison estate, with HMPs Bullingdon, Erlestoke and Wayland lighting the way in the next few months and work ongoing to power the remaining 16 from Spring next year.

Prisons and Probation Minister, Alex Chalk, said:

As we build back safer and greener from the pandemic, our prisons are playing their part in the Government’s ambitious environmental plans.

Alongside our wider sustainable action across the estate, including new all-electric prisons, we will ensure our jails are good for the pocket and the planet.

This unprecedented expansion of solar energy follows the announcement in May that the government’s four new prisons – a vital building block in the drive to create 10,000 new modern prisons places that cut crime – will operate as zero-carbon in the future. 

The prisons will use an all-electric design that eliminates the need for gas boilers and will in time produce net-zero emissions.

Solar panels, alongside heat pumps and more efficient lighting systems will reduce energy demand by half and cut carbon emissions by at least 85% compared to prisons already under construction.

The environmentally friendly drive accompanies wider government action to build back greener with more than £12 billion in green investment to help achieve its net zero commitment.

This will include hydrogen and carbon capture technology, greener homes, electric vehicle charging infrastructure, walking and cycling infrastructure, flood defences and backing offshore wind to power every UK home by 2030.

Notes to editors

• Ground mounted solar panels have recently been installed at HMPs Bullingdon, Erlestoke, and Wayland.
• Panels are now being installed at HMPs Eastwood Park, Ford, Guys Marsh, Haverigg, Isle of Wight, Leyhill, Lindholme and Moorland, Littlehey, New Hall, and Onley, Stocken, Werrington, Whatton and Whitemoor.
• Work is ongoing to facilitate panels at HMPs Bure and Full Sutton.
• The project will cost around £12 million, to be recouped through annual savings. Combined, the prisons will generate more than 7000kW of capacity per year.
• The first of the four new prisons will be built next to HMP Full Sutton in East Yorkshire and work is underway to investigate locations for a further prison in the North-West of England and two in the South-East.
• The MOJ is seeking to achieve the gold-standard ‘outstanding’ rating in Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) for its four new prisons. BREEAM is an independent scheme which assesses the sustainability of infrastructure projects.
• The UK is a global leader on tackling climate change which is why we’ve committed to reach net zero by 2050.

The trainee medical physicist and radiation protection support technician from the Radiation Sciences Group, whose family background is in the military, never realised she would be able to combine her science and service.

She said:

It’s been really exciting that I’ve been able to do that science role in defence because I sort of thought ‘well, if I’m going to be in defence I can’t be a physicist. You don’t have physicists for the Army!’

And then it turns out you do have physicists for the Army and even better than that you have medical physicists for the Army.

Eleanor’s role includes looking after the medical equipment that the military use such as X-ray, CT and fluoroscopy, as well as more general radiation protection for defence.

The small team covers the whole country looking after facilities which can range, for example, from small dental centres in a building in a remote barracks to large Navy, Army and Air Force sites.

The People Inside: Eleanor May

Eleanor’s first visit was to 34 Field Hospital on a validation exercise which means they set up as if deployed and run through scenarios with simulated casualties.

She was also involved in a visit to the Queen Elizabeth fleet flagship to test the kit and check documentation and procedures.

“Just to get to be on the ship, the ship is really cool,… and it’s really fun,” she said.

The Cambridge graduate has worked at the world-leading Defence, Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) for 18 months.

She added:

My role is quite unusual considering there’s only me and my mentor who do it. That’s pretty niche.

I think one of the most important attributes I bring to my job is enjoying building relationships with people as well as knowing the science behind what we’re doing.

What I most enjoy is getting to build relationships with the guys who are using the X-ray equipment or using the radioactive sources.

Being able to put people at ease and communicate the science, I think that’s the thing I most enjoy and is one of the most important bits about what we do.

Thousands of Afghan women, children and others most in need will be welcomed to the UK under one of the most generous resettlement schemes in our country’s history.

Those who have been forced to flee their home or face threats of persecution from the Taliban will be offered a route to set up home in the UK permanently.

The UK government’s ambition is for the new Afghanistan citizens’ resettlement scheme to resettle 5,000 Afghan nationals who are at risk due to the current crisis, in its first year.

Priority will be given to women and girls, and religious and other minorities, who are most at risk of human rights abuses and dehumanising treatment by the Taliban.

This resettlement scheme will be kept under further review for future years, with up to a total of 20,000 in the long-term. The ambition to provide protection to thousands of people fleeing Afghanistan and the complex picture on the ground means there will be significant challenges delivering the scheme, but the government is working at speed to address these obstacles.

The government will work with stakeholders, including devolved administrations and local councils, to ensure that Afghans who will be rebuilding their lives in the UK have the support they need.

This new route is modelled on the successful Syrian vulnerable persons resettlement scheme, which resettled 20,000 Syrian refugees over a seven-year period from 2014 to 2021.

The UK is working with international partners to develop a system to identify those most at risk and resettle them, ensuring help goes to those that need it. The Prime Minister is expected to discuss this with G7 leaders in a virtual meeting in the coming days.

The new route is separate from, and in addition to, the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP), which offers any current or former locally employed staff who are assessed to be under serious threat to life priority relocation to the UK. 5,000 former Afghan staff and their family members are expected to be relocated to the UK by the end of this year under ARAP.

Today the Prime Minister will address Parliament on the UK’s work on the crisis in Afghanistan. The government is currently working at pace to evacuate British nationals, their families and former Afghan staff from Afghanistan. Since Saturday 520 British nationals, diplomats and former Afghan staff have left Afghanistan on UK military flights.

In his statement, the Prime Minister will outline the steps the international community must take to avert a humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan. This requires an immediate increase in humanitarian aid to the country and region, ahead of a longer-term process for supporting vulnerable refugees.

Last night, Home Secretary Priti Patel chaired an emergency meeting with her Five Country counterparts to discuss the developing situation in Afghanistan and what steps each country is taking to provide safe and legal routes for refugees.

Attendees were:

• Karen Andrews, Australia Minister for Home Affairs
• Alex Hawke, Australia Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs
• Marco Mendicino, Canada Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship
• Kris Faafoi, New Zealand Minister of Justice, Immigration, and Broadcasting & Media
• Alejandro Mayorkas, US Secretary of Homeland Security

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said:

We owe a debt of gratitude to all those who have worked with us to make Afghanistan a better place over the last twenty years. Many of them, particularly women, are now in urgent need of our help. I am proud that the UK has been able to put in place this route to help them and their families live safely in the UK.

The best solution for everyone is an Afghanistan that works for all Afghans. That means the international community coming together to set firm, political conditions for the country’s future governance. And it means focusing our efforts on increasing the resilience of the wider region to prevent a humanitarian emergency.

Home Secretary Priti Patel said:

The UK government will always stand by those in the world in their hour of need when fleeing persecution or oppression.

I want to ensure that as a nation we do everything possible to provide support to the most vulnerable fleeing Afghanistan so they can start a new life in safety in the UK, away from the tyranny and oppression they now face.

Our country has a proud history of offering sanctuary to those in need. We will not abandon people who have been forced to flee their homes and are now living in terror of what might come next. The Afghan citizens’ resettlement scheme will save lives.

The government is clear that the new route will not compromise on national security and any person arriving on the route will have to pass the same strict security checks as those resettled through other schemes.

The speed and flexibility of delivering the new route demonstrates the government’s New Plan for Immigration in action, which seeks to make the system fairer by protecting and supporting those in genuine need of asylum.

The government has also provided thousands of Afghans asylum in the UK and many Afghan nationals have come to the UK to work and study under the Points-Based Immigration system.