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The plan is to spend £3bn on upgrading 137 prisons and creating room for an additional 20,000 prisoners. The work will involve a mixture of refurbishment and new build. Sports, education and welfare facilities will also be provided.

The list of consultants is headed by Cyril Sweett, which will carry out health and safety work, project management and cost consultancy.

White Young Green will take on project management and health and safety work, and will act as environmental consultants alongside Jacobs Gibb, Parkman, and Scott Wilson.

Other cost consultants working on the Prison Service programme include Faithful & Gould and Turner & Townsend, both of which will act as project managers.

The other project managers for the programme, which will be divided into six regions across the country, are Bailey, Bucknall Austin, EC Harris, Jacobs Gibb, Scott Wilson and Stride Treglown.

The Prison Service has selected a team of in-house architects to oversee the designs, which will be produced by partnerships between architects and contractors – the latter to be selected from a longlist of 17 by the end of the year. The architects selected include Aedas, DGP, Jacobs Gibb, Roger Dudley and White Young Green.

Kevin Murray, a director of management consultant Brian Farrington, which is working for the Prison Service, said the service was seeking innovative design solutions. He said they needed to be consistent with the Prison Service's operational requirements and sustainable development policy.

It has also emerged that South Bank University has been commissioned by the Prison Service to act as a colour consultant.

South Bank University's idea is to introduce blues, greens and yellows, which are believed to have positive effects on the behaviour of inmates and the morale of prison staff.

The university's colour design course director, Hilary Dalke, said that she was not looking to solve the inmates' problems but aid their rehabilitation.