GEOAmey boss apologises for prisoner transport failings

The boss of GEOAmey has apologised for the firm’s failings in its prison transportation contracts.

The firm has been the main transportation arm for Scotland’s prisons and courts since 2017, but it has come under fire in recent years for a slew of issues, including inmates missing hospital appointments and delays caused to courts by late arrivals.

Scotland’s Chief Inspector for Prisons, Wendy Sinclair-Gieben, this month accused the contractor of breaching the human rights of prisoners, claiming one inmate with stage four cancer missed three “vital” hospital appointments because of GEOAmey.

In a submission to the Public Audit Committee this week, the contractor said the issues had arisen due to an ageing prison population requiring more hospital visits than previously thought, and a lack of staff.

Speaking before the committee on Thursday, managing director David Jones accepted there are issues, but he insisted there is no human rights case to answer.

“We have clearly had issues and I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge and apologise fully for the role we have played in the disruption to the criminal justice system in Scotland,” he said.

“There is, after all, a human impact to every delay.”

He went on to praise the “quite extraordinary work” of GEOAmey officers carrying out the contract.

“I wish to state GEOAmey’s commitment and determination to playing our part in making the SCCPES contract a success,” he added.

“The contract is difficult, it is challenging, but it is not impossible, should all parties recognise that it will need a multi-agency approach rather than standalone efforts of any individual organisation.”

On the number of missed appointments, which have fluctuated wildly since GEOAmey took over the contract, he said: “I would say very clearly that even one appointment failure is one appointment failure too many – I would concede that and accept that fully.

“But we are trying to address the operating environment changes that we’ve talked about extensively since I’ve opened up my evidence here with the needs to recruit more people.”

Between November 2021 and January 2022, 690 appointments were missed, a figure which dropped to 53 and 42 in the following two quarters, before spiking to 356 and 819 in the two quarters between August 2022 and January 2023.

Again, the figure dropped dramatically to 88 and 209 respectively in the following two quarters, rising again to 826 in the three months up to September last year.

The firm, Mr Jones added, is taking a financial hit for continuing the contract, although he said he is confident it could return to profit by the end of the year.

He told the committee there has been an operating loss of £7 million since it had taken over the contract, which he described as “not sustainable”, while James Huntley, the accounts director for the contract, said it is still making a loss of about £1 million per year.

But Mr Jones was adamant that GEOAmey will not walk away from the contract.

“I can’t see that,” he said in response to Tory MSP Graham Simpson.

“There’s a degree of confidence that we will get this contract back into a marginal profit situation this year, and we effectively have two years left of the contract.”

Submissions from across the justice sector to the committee on GEOAmey’s issues laid out the scale of the problem.

The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service said there had been an increase in incidents where accused persons have attempted to escape from the dock, while another accused was found to have a knife in their possession.

It also outlined a case where 16 close relatives of a murder victim had come to court for a case due to call at 9.30am, but the accused was not delivered until 5pm. On the same day, victims and witnesses in a rape case were also forced to wait.