Deal signed for £68m jail

The jail will take its first prisoners in March 2005

A £68m contract to build and run a new privatised prison in Cambridgeshire was signed on Friday.

The new prison at Peterborough - the ninth private sector jail in England and Wales - will have 840 places for men and women inmates.

Peterborough Prison Services will design, build and manage the jail under a 25-year Private Finance Initiative deal with the Prison Service.

It will house remand and sentenced inmates and 12 places will be set aside for a mother and baby unit.

Peterborough Prison Services is jointly owned by Sodexho Alliance, Interserve Project Services and the Royal Bank of Scotland.

The United Kingdom Detention Services (UKDS) will operate the prison which is being built on the site of a former factory.

Construction is due to begin soon and the jail will take its first prisoners in March 2005.

Last December, UKDS won a contract to build a new 450-place jail at Ashford, Middlesex, and it already runs a Forest Bank young offenders' institution in Manchester and Harmondsworth immigration removal centre.