THE Home Office has announced that it has abandoned plans to turn Dover’s Connaught Barracks into an open prison.

In a move that has delighted campaigners against the prison, the Home Secretary, John Reid, has confirmed that his department is no longer looking at housing prisoners at Connaught Barracks.

Mr Reid said it was the bitter campaign against the move, which had convinced him to abandon the idea. Since news was leaked that Connaught could become a prison, Dover’s MP, councillors and people organised petitions, meetings and marches against the move.

A petition signed by 15,000 people was presented to prisons minister, Gerry Sutcliffe when he visited the town last month. Campaigners also came face to face with Mr Sutcliffe and made emotional speeches about why they felt Dover was the wrong place for an open prison.

The arguments they used included fears that safety could not be guaranteed around nearby schools and that Dover’s tentative regeneration could be damaged if investors found out about a potential prison, outside Dover Castle.

But the town’s MP, Gwyn Prosser, feels that the Government also listened to powerful arguments about the effects on the town’s military community.

If it had gone ahead, the prison would have been next to the Burgoyne Heights community, an area occupied by families of people currently fighting abroad, some of them in Iraq.

Mr Prosser said: "I think it was the worries of the families nearby of those serving abroad, plus children from military families, who attend the nearby Duke of Yorks Royal Military School that were very powerful influential factors."

Mr Prosser also paid tribute to everyone involved in the campaign against the prison, which was started by two members of an ordinary residents’ association - Julia Bishop and Malcolm Scott from the Burgoyne Heights community.

"We all know that the pressure on the Government to provide additional prison capacity has been exceptional and that Connaught Barracks offered the home secretary a quick fix," he added.

"It was only the strength of our arguments as articulated by all the political parties and local people that made ministers think again."

Juilia Bishop said: "It hasn’t quite yet sunk in. It is great news. I think we presented a very calm and logical message to Mr Reid. This was not just about people not wanting the prison."

However, a few voices in the town had suggested the effects of an open prison, if it went ahead, would be negligible.

An Anglican priest, Fr Peter Sherred, was concerned at the level of "hysteria" over news.