JOBS are at risk at Chelmsford prison after the Ministry of Justice revealed the jail will partially close to save money.
Space for 132 inmates will be lost by April at HMP Chelmsford, in Springfield Road, as part of government plans to save £63 million on the cost of running prisons nationwide.
A decision over which areas of its four wings are to close will take place over the next few weeks and jobs are at risk, the Ministry of Justice confirmed on Thursday.
Prisoners left without a place will be sent to another jail, depending on the individual and the length of their sentence.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice said: "In terms of job losses we will do everything possible to avoid job losses and redundancies by re-deploying staff and putting people on a Voluntary Early Departure Scheme where appropriate."
Chelmsford Prison is a male-only Category B and Young Offenders Institution (YOI), with roughly 650 prisoners.
It is one of three prisons in the country that will partially close, while six others in England will be shut completely.
HMP Bulwood Hall, a prison for foreign nationals in Hockley, along with prisons in Canterbury, Gloucester, Kingston, Shepton Mallet and Shrewsbury, will shut for good, while jails in Hull and the Isle of Wight will, like Chelmsford, lose some accommodation.
The decision is part of a major overhaul of the prison service which includes the building of Britain's biggest prison.
The new prison planned for either London, the north-west or north Wales, could hold more than 2,000 prisoners.
Four new mini-prisons, known as houseblocks, will also be built and are planned to be set up at HMPs Parc in South Wales, Peterborough in Cambridgeshire, The Mount in Hertfordshire and Thameside in London, which in total will hold 1,260 inmates.
Chelmsford prison governor Rob Davis could not speak to the Chronicle. The MOJ did not know what would happen with the surplus space at the city's prison.
But Justice Secretary Chris Grayling said in a statement: "We have to bring down the cost of our prison system, much of which is old and expensive.
"But I never want the courts to be in a position where they cannot send a criminal to prison because there is no place available.
"So we have to move as fast as we can to replace the older parts of our prison system.
"That's why we are moving ahead with immediate plans for new prison capacity, as well as closing older and more expensive facilities. It is also why I am now moving ahead with planning for the next generation of new prisons."
The programme is part of the Government's drive for new capacity to replace older prisons and so bring down the cost of operating the prison system.
Currently the cost of holding a prisoner in an older prison is often more than twice as expensive as keeping them in a new one, the MOJ says.
The Prison Officers Association, the union for many of the staff locally, was unavailable for comment despite repeated requests.
