One of the largest women’s prisons, HMP Holloway in London, was closed in 2016. HMPPS sold the prison in March 2019 and generated £81.5 million from the proceeds.41 We were concerned that such a large amount of money had come out of the female prison estate but appeared to have been spent on improving the men’s prisons estate. We therefore asked how much of the money raised by the sale of HMP Holloway was reinvested in the female prison estate. HMPPS told us that some of the money was used in the female prison estate but did not tell us how much this was. It said that the money from the sale was returned to the Ministry and subsequently used for “a number of purposes”. The Ministry confirmed that that the money went partly to its programme to build new prisons and partly to fund its general overspend.42