Decision awaited on prison land.

COUNCIL chiefs in Gwynedd expect to hear by the end of the month whether a site in Caernarfon for a new prison is being acquired.

Earlier this year the Government ended months of speculation over the siting of a new prison in Wales by choosing the former 27-acre Dynamex factory on the outskirts of the town.

But since then negotiations between site owners Bluefield Caernarfon Ltd and the Ministry of Justice have dragged on.

Iwan Trefor Jones, Gwynedd County Council's strategic director of development, told a meeting of the North Wales Economic Forum in St Asaph yesterday that discussions between the site owners and the ministry were still ongoing but the county council expected to get word of a final decision on the acquisition of the site by the end of this month. He said a planning application could be lodged within six months of that.

He added that the council was trying to arrange a meeting with the ministry to ensure that the government fully understood the importance of the prison project to the county's economy.

A 500-inmate prison will create around 700 jobs and pump an estimated pounds 17m a year into the area. The prison is expected to be ready to take its first inmates from 2014.