Holloway Prison is to close, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said this afternoon.

Mr Osborne announced the women’s prison, in Parkhurst Road, will shut in his spending review and autumn statement.

Though he wasn’t specific about the Holloway site, he appeared to suggest the building will make way for housing.

Mr Osborne said: “I can tell the House that Holloway Prison, the biggest women’s jail in western Europe, will close.

“In the future, women prisoners will serve their sentences in more humane conditions, better designed to keep them away from crime.

“By selling these old prisons, we will create more space for housing in our inner cities, for another of the great social failures of our age has been the failure to build enough houses.

“In the end, spending reviews like this come down to choices about what are priorities are. I am clear, in this spending review, we choose to build.”