Early prisoner release putting huge pressure on Welsh city

Cardiff has the second highest number of expected releases across England and Wales and the council say the numbers are putting services under strain

Cardiff Council officials said they received mixed reports "every other day" about how many prison leavers they would have to support with already under-strain services. At the council's community and adult services scrutiny committee meeting on Monday, September 23, councillors heard how one of the biggest pressures the housing and homelessness services face is prisoners being released early.

The local authority is set to purchase a hotel, student accommodation and a house of multiple occupation in order to house people, with temporary accommodation across the city already full. For the latest analysis of the biggest stories, sign up to the Wales Matters newsletter here

The local authority is set to purchase a hotel, student accommodation and a house of multiple occupation in order to house people, with temporary accommodation across the city already full. On a single day on September 10, Cardiff Council had to support 11 prison leavers with housing.

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Cardiff Council cabinet member for housing, Cllr Lynda Thorne, said: "Why they have to release them all on the same day is just beyond me. "I don't know why they can't [do it] in one or two a day over three months rather than all in one day.

"It has got to be easier for the prison service, for probation and certainly for us." In October 2023, an early release scheme called the End of Custody Supervised Licence scheme was brought in to address overcrowding in prisons across the country.

The new Labour run UK Government introduced another measure in July 2024 to further address this issue. The Standard Determinate Sentence 40 (SDS40) scheme temporarily reduced the proportion of certain custodial sentences served in prison from 50% to 40%.

Cardiff Council's director of adults, housing and communities, Jane Thomas, said: "They [prison leavers] were risk assessed and placed in appropriate placements. [In] the run up, the information was very misleading I think it is true to say.

"We had various different reports because obviously the probation service were also having to deal with this really quickly. They were providing us with different lists every other day, but working together we got there in the end and I think it went well."

Cardiff has the second highest number of expected releases across England and Wales under the SDS40 scheme, according to Cardiff Council. The council is expecting to have to deal with another tranche of released prisoners on October 22, 2024. However, it is unable to say yet how many it will have to support.

Cardiff Council's assistant director of housing and communities, Helen Evans, confirmed that the lists the local authority was receiving about prisoners included different people and different numbers of people with different kinds of risks.

She added: "It was a changing picture and people who were perhaps on a list for Monday... for whatever reason had their sentence extended and so they were off the list by Tuesday."

Ms Evans said meetings were held daily to go through the lists of prisoners and that the council had its safeguarding operational manager involved. The local authority also put supporting officers on the probation service on September 10 so they could provide additional support if it was needed.

If the council goes ahead with the purchase of the three properties it is in negotiations for, that will bring 280 units into use. There are currently about 8,000 people on Cardiff Council's housing waiting list.

Acceleration of decision making on asylum applications is also expected to bring more pressure on the council's homelessness service.

Many asylum seekers have already been living in Cardiff for a number of years, but they will be entitled to seek support with housing from the council if they are granted leave to remain in the country.

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