The Scottish Prison Service has confirmed a ‘significant improvement’ in performance since G4S assumed responsibility for the Scottish courts and prisoner escorting contract.

In a statement yesterday, the SPS also confirmed that the performance criteria of the contract awarded to G4S were ‘considerably stricter’ than in previous years, and that the number of delays to court business as a result of late deliveries to prisoners since G4S began the contract in January was ‘very small’.

David Denny, Director for G4S Scotland, confirmed that the company had overseen a 40% drop in the number of late deliveries to courts:

"Since taking over the contract for prisoner escorting in January 2012, we have been working hard to reduce the number of historical late deliveries to courts. We have retrained staff and introduced new G4S procedures and our client has noted a significant improvement in performance since the contract became operational.

“In the six months from April to September, there has been a reduction of about 40% in the rate of late deliveries to court. While we are certainly not complacent, this is encouraging progress and we will continue to work with our staff and our partners to ensure that this continues.”

G4S was awarded the seven-year contract to deliver court and prisoner escorting for Scotland in March 2011 and assumed responsibility for the secure transport of an annual total of around 180,000 prisoners on 10 January 2012.

While in the first three months of the contract there were over 9,300 late deliveries to court, the next six months saw a marked improvement with 12,408 late deliveries – a 40% improvement in performance. Figures for November point to a further improvement with only 1 in 990 deliveries resulting in any delay to court, a rate of only 0.1 per cent.

Mr Denny added:

“Not only have we delivered a marked improvement in performance but we are doing so while delivering far greater value for money to the Scottish taxpayer. We were able to save the Scottish Prison Service just under £2m per year on the contract compared to the price under the previous contract – a total saving of around £14m over the life of the contract.”