Extensions of the contract

31. In 2016, the contract was extended for 15 months until May 2018.
32. The Home Office was due to award a new contract to operate Brook House in late September 2017, but this procurement was paused when the Panorama programme aired to facilitate further due diligence work on the bids and was then subsequently cancelled.
33. In August 2018, the Home Office agreed a second extension of the contract to May 2020. Mr Riley told the Inquiry that the purpose of this extension (which he called “short”) was:

“to allow officials time to reflect on the findings of [former Prisons and Probation Ombudsman] Stephen Shaw’s two reviews of vulnerability in detention, and the Verita report. It was only right that these important reports be given full consideration, and that future contract specification be carefully designed in accordance. A ‘knee-jerk’ reaction to change supplier would not, to my mind, have been in the best interests of the welfare of those in detention (which is the single biggest driver in the new contract) and would have risked destabilising the Centre at a time where positive stability was most required.”¹

He acknowledged that this decision might be seen as “questionable”.² Mr Stephen Kershaw, Senior Director of the Immigration Enforcement Board at the Home Office, told the Inquiry that he had advised ministers on the decision to extend the contract so that the Home Office could “develop and let a very different successor contract”, taking account also of the findings of the National Audit Office.³

1. HOM0332005 para 23[↩]
2. HOM0332005_008 para 23[↩]
3. HOM0332166 para 12; DL0000175[↩]