A Sussex prison has been officially saved from a private sector takeover.

The Prison Service has decided against paving the way for firms to bid to run Ford Open Prison, near Arundel.

Staff at the jail had been warned to make major improvements after concerns about inmates absconding, failing drugs tests and not doing enough work.

Governor Fiona Radford has now been told the Prison Service is happy enough to keep the prison's management in-house instead of ordering performance testing.

Ford will still be subject to a 12-month review as it implements changes.

When performance testing is replaced by a return to market testing next year, the prison will have to ensure it does not come under threat again.

Performance testing would have forced the governors to convince the Home Office they were better placed to run the jail than private security firms.

If the Government decided Ford could not manage itself, it would have become the tenth UK prison to be privatised.

Martin Narey, chief executive of the new National Offender Management Service, has said market testing would allow private firms to bid directly for prisons or groups of prisons.

Ms Radford said: "We're very pleased. I'm very happy that people are working hard to make the necessary changes but we won't get complacent.

"We can now keep working to ensure we aren't put up for market testing."

The Prison Service was also considering forcing HMP Maidstone to undergo performance testing but has abandoned the policy.

Ms Radford said: "It's difficult to know whether our threat has been lifted because of improvements we've made or because the Prison Service isn't doing performance testing any more.

"But we have been quite successful in meeting the targets we were given."

Ms Radford has been praised for making improvements since taking over last November, reducing the proportion of positive drugs tests from 29.2 per cent last December to 12.5 per cent in March.

She also wants to increase inmates' working hours, after last month's Prison Service annual report showed Ford demanded just 37.7 hours of purposeful activity each week - fewer than any other open jail.

The Argus told last December how prisoners were clambering over a broken fence to buy alcohol at Tesco in Littlehampton.

We also reported how 50 prisoners who had absconded since 1998 remained at large and 91 inmates left last year, more than five times as many as in 1994.

The Prison Service launched a review of Ford at the start of this year, setting improvements to be introduced within 12 months.

The annual report showed Ford prisoners failed 23.4 per cent of drug tests, better than only two equivalent jails, but there were no serious assaults on staff or inmates.