Britain's Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab has unveiled the greenest and most innovative jail in the country.

The new prison at Glen Parva, Leicestershire, will play a crucial role in cutting crime by training up to 500 prisoners at a time in the skills of the future such as coding, recycling and waste management to help them find a job on release in new and emerging technologies and dramatically reduce their chances of reoffending.

All prisoners will also have access to in-cell technology to work towards a range of qualifications, such as maths, English, IT and engineering.

The major infrastructure project acts as a blueprint for the ambitious prison-build programme of the Boris Johnson government which will create 20,000 modern, rehabilitative places by the mid-2020s. The programme is backed by unprecedented funding of £3.8 billion confirmed in last week’s Spending Review.

"Glen Parva represents the future, using in-cell technology to raise literacy and numeracy standards, and designing workshops to get offenders into work – to drive down re-offending, and protect the public," Raab was quoted as saying by the UK foreign ministry today.

In all, the new prison will be 35 per cent greener than HMP Berwyn in North Wales which was opened just four years ago.

The new prison, opening in 2023, has been largely built off-site using cutting edge technology – speeding up construction and minimising waste. Rubble from the old, demolished prison on this site has been reused and will use green energy including more than 960 solar panels and infrastructure for electric vehicle charging points.

The construction project has also piloted the use of power generators which have been converted from diesel use to be fuelled by specially treated vegetable oil – cutting CO2 by 90 per cent through this fossil-free technology.

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