Yahoo Finance Pub worker paid almost £20,000 for a prison job he never actually started
A pub worker has been paid almost £20,000 for working at Nottingham prison – despite never having taken a job there.
The man never began his training at the jail but says he received between £1,200 and £1,600 a month for over a year.
All that time, he says, he was was actually working as a deputy manager for a pub chain.
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“What situation is Nottingham Prison in that they don’t even know that somebody who is not working for them is still being paid?” the 28-year-old told the BBC.
“If I’m the only person it’s still going to have cost them 20-odd thousand pounds a year [before tax] – but are there potentially more people?”
The unnamed man said he had applied successfully for a position at HMP Nottingham but deferred in December 2016 as his wife was ill.
But, even though he never began his training, he received £700 at the end of that month and has been in receipt of regular amounts ever since.
He emailed the prison service in March last year to inform them of his situation but the money kept on coming.
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“I think they were advertising about £21,000 or £22,000 a year, so I presume after tax contributions that’s what the outcome was,” he said.
The prison service apologised for the error and told the BBC: “We are working to stop this from happening again, and will look at any lessons that can be learned.”
Earlier this month, the chief inspector of prisons described HMP Nottingham, which holds about 1,000 male prisoners, as being in a “dangerous state”.
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It is thought eight inmates have killed themselves there in the past two years and self-harming among inmates is also on the rise.
Chief inspector Peter Clarke warned ministers there would be “further tragedies” unless safety measures were put in place.
