Prisoners 'running the wings', 'inmates off their t*ts', staff who have 'lost control' - the jail that's had £1bn of public money

The Government is facing a call from an MP to cancel a billion pound contract it has with Sodexo to run Salford's troubled Forest Bank prison following an M.E.N. investigation into the jail.

The claims we have uncovered have resulted in calls from Salford and Eccles MP Rebecca Long-Bailey to cancel Sodexo's contract and bring the prison into state control. The MP said our investigation, based on allegations from a whistleblower, an ex-prisoner and his father and the family of a grandfather who died in his cell, exposed a 'culture of lawlessness' at the jail.

The allegations paint a disturbing picture. We have been told that:

Sodexo's contract to run the prison ends on January 19, 2025. Back in 1998, it was awarded a deal worth £1,006,771,964 to design, build and run the prison built on the site of the former Agecroft power station under a private finance initiative to house a maximum 1,064 inmates. The deal was to last 25 years, before being extended.

The facilities management giant, founded and based in France, runs six prisons in England and Scotland, and last year recorded revenues of 21.1 billion euros, including 'underlying operating profit' of more than a billion euros, up 83 per cent.

Over the years, the Manchester Evening News has consistently reported on issues at the prison; including how the prison vowed to crackdown on the use of smuggled phones in the prison after we reported how prisoners captured shocking acts of drug-fuelled cruelty inside the prison in 2016, including inmates pretending to be fighting dogs.. A guard resigned in the same year after he was caught watching porn on a wing computer. We also reported how a prison officer was jailed for smuggling spice into the prison and two other guards were