sps garden furniture

SCOTTISH PRISON INDUSTRIES produce a range of garden furniture, dog kennels, sheds and items such as pergolas and garden gates under the ATHOL and CLASSIC SHED brand names at HMP GLENOCHIL. These are held as stock at the FAULDHOUSE depot and are sold to garden centres around Britain, including CHALLENGE FENCING, CHAMPFLEURIE ESTATE LTD., HILLHOUT LTD., KDM INTERNATIONAL and STEWART FENCING LTD. So you might find yourself sitting on one of SPS's A-FRAME BENCHES in a pub garden somewhere.

Whilst the garden furniture workshops provide a certain amount of training and some skills value on morticing machines, table & band saws & pillar drills, our contacts paint a picture of a poorly motivated prisoners and prison officers resentful at their helping subsidise private firms whilst the poor cons are "paid peanuts".

The PRISON SERVICE internal document COSTING AND PRICING GUIDELINES FOR PRISON INDUSTRIES states that the pricing of goods and services should be calculated to include:
● direct costs - such as materials, prisoners wages, plant & its maintenance, training, utilities, etc.
● indirect costs - staff costs e.g. wages & pension provision; capital depreciation, rent & rates.

The formula used by SPS staff to calculate the cost of materials, the largest of the direct costs considered in the pricing regime, places wastage at 10%. However, our contacts tell us that the actual wastage rates can be as much as 60%. So this is allegedly hidden from the customer, as it would prove too uncommercial to charge them the true price, with the real costs being covered by SPS. In addition, the rates used to calculate the final price are also claimed to be kept artificially low by not covering the full cost of the utilities used and prison guards wages (@ £27K plus p.a.).

These pricing formulae have not changed significantly in 10 years and are being kept artificially low. This is how the prison labour system is kept so competitive and why the prisoners continue to get as little as £1.25 for a full days work in the garden furniture workshop.

So on your next visit to a garden centre to buy that new garden bench, shed or rose arch that you've been promising yourself, just remember the prisoners in HMP GLENOCHIL that had to make it on a daily wage more or less the same as the price of the packet of flower seeds that you'll probably be impulse buying whilst you are there.

Or maybe you you are a regular visitor to the Glee international garden furniture trade exhibition at the NEC in Birmingham? In which case you can ask Anthony Apperley, Ian Timmins or one of the other production staff on their stand what exactly it is that the prisoners get out of slaving away in their workshop and how many subsequently get work on the outside in timber manufacturing based on the limited skills that they learn making this furniture for peanuts.