A PIONEERING drug rehabilitation scheme is to be scrapped at a Portland prison.

Five jobs will be lost at HMP The Verne when the Addiction Rehabilitation Centre moves to Dartmoor later this year.

Staff said they have been told they must move with the scheme or face redundancy.

One insider said: "The counsellors who work on the programme are gutted. One or two are going to go to Dartmoor but the others have already settled down here and will essentially be made redundant. They've got family and lives here. The programme has been run here for about five years but over the last few years they've put stricter and stricter criteria on inmates allowed to do it. "You're not allowed to do it if you've got escape attempts on your record. You're not allowed to do it if you've had a positive drug test in prison. You're not allowed to do it if you've got drug dealing on your record.

"That excludes about every prisoner here. The programme only has about 12 or 13 people on it at the moment and there's spaces for about 25. I don't understand why they can't have one at Dartmoor and one here.

"The inmates are gutted too. Since the programme was brought in it was judged the number one for rehabilitation in the country and last year it was third-best.

"I mean, 90 per cent of clients are clean after it."

A prison spokeswoman said: "We no longer hold prisoners at the Verne who would benefit from the programme.

"Since January 2006 the strict reception criteria has reduced dramatically the number of prisoners needing the level of support provided by the programme.

"Prisoners are still going through the programme so it's due to close later this year.

"Sixty prisoners per year have gone through the six-month programme based on total abstinence and therapeutic group work."

Avon and Wiltshire Partnership Trust, which runs the scheme, declined to comment on the closure.