WITH the country filled to the brim with criminals and those on remand and the government promising to build new prisons, why has no one come up with the idea that the Ordnance Survey building could be converted into a prison, youth detention centre, or asylum holding area for would be asylum seekers?

It is a huge building which when first built was home to 5,000 civil servants.

I believe that it would only take six months for the conversion as against three years for a new penal establishments to be built.

It would also bring new jobs to supply and keep such an establishment running.

The taxpayer is always shelling out new money when we have an ideal solution to the major problem of prison overcrowding, already built which would soon be ready for use.

PAT MARTIN, Rownhams.