Zoe Ball is leaving her BBC Radio 2 breakfast show after six years.

The 53-year-old, who recently lost her mother to cancer, will present her last show on Friday, 20 December.

She said she was leaving to focus on family, but will remain part of the Radio 2 team and will give further details next year.

Announcing the news on her Tuesday show, she said: “After six years of fun times alongside you all on the breakfast show, I’ve decided it’s time to step away from the early alarm call and start a new chapter.

“You know I think the world of you all, listeners, and it truly has been such a privilege to share the mornings with you, to go through life’s little ups and downs, we got through the lockdown together, didn’t we?

“We’ve shared a hell of a lot, the good times, the tough times, there’s been a lot of laughter. And I am going to miss you cats.”

Scott Mills will replace Ball on the breakfast show following her departure next month.

“Zoe and I have been such good friends now for over 25 years and have spent much of that time as part of the same radio family here at Radio 2 and also on Radio 1,” he said.

“She’s done an incredible job on this show over the past six years, and I am beyond excited to be handed the baton.”

Hugging outside the BBC building on the day of the announcement, Ball said she was “really chuffed for my mate and really excited about it”.

Ball was the first female host of both the BBC Radio 1 and Radio 2 breakfast shows, starting at the Radio 1 breakfast show in 1998, and taking over her current Radio 2 role from Chris Evans in 2020 after he left the show.

She took a break from hosting her show over the summer, returning in September.

Ahead of her stint in radio, Ball – who is the daughter of children’s presenter Johnny Ball – co-hosted the BBC’s Saturday morning children’s magazine show Live & Kicking alongside Jamie Theakston for three years from 1996.

She has two children, Woody and Nelly, with her ex-husband, DJ and musician Norman Cook, known professionally as Fatboy Slim.

Ball said in her announcement her last show towards the end of December will be “just in time for Christmas with plenty of fun and shenanigans”.

“While I’m stepping away from the Breakfast Show, I’m not disappearing entirely – I’ll still be a part of the Radio 2 family, with more news in the New Year,” she added.

“I’m excited to embrace my next chapter, including being a mum in the mornings, and I can’t wait to tune in on the school run!”

Helen Thomas, head of Radio 2, said: “Zoe has woken up the nation on Radio 2 with incredible warmth, wit and so much joy since January 2019, and I’d like to thank her for approaching each show with as much vim and vigour as if it were her first. I’m thrilled that she’ll remain an important part of the Radio 2 family.”

Mills, 51, got his first presenting role aged just 16 for a local station in Hampshire, and went on to present in Bristol and Manchester, before joining BBC Radio 1 in 1998.

He’s previously worked as a cover presenter on Radio 2, but this is his first permanent role on the station.

The prison service is starting to recategorise the security risk of offenders to ease capacity pressures, Sky News understands.

It involves lowering or reconsidering the threshold of certain offenders to move them from the closed prison estate (category A to C) to the open estate (category D) because there are more free cell spaces there.

Examples of this could include discounting adjudications – formal hearings when a prisoner is accused of breaking the rules – for certain offenders, so they don’t act as official reasons not to transport them to a lower-security jail.

Prisoners are also categorised according to an Incentives and Earned Privileges (IEP) status. There are different levels – basic, standard and enhanced – based on how they keep to the rules or display a commitment to rehabilitation.

Usually ‘enhanced’ prisoners take part in meaningful activity – employment and training – making them eligible among other factors, to be transferred to the open estate.

Insiders suggest this system in England and Wales is being rejigged so that greater numbers of ‘standard’ prisoners can transfer, whereas before it would more typically be those with ‘enhanced’ status.

Open prisons have minimal security and allow eligible prisoners to spend time on day release away from the prison on license conditions to carry out work or education.

The aim is to help reintegrate them back into society once they leave. As offenders near the end of their sentence, they are housed in open prisons.

Many of those released as part of the early release scheme in October after serving 40% of their sentence were freed from open prisons.

They were the second tranche of offenders freed as part of this scheme, and had been sentenced to five years or more.

Despite early release measures, prisons are still battling a chronic overcrowding crisis. The male estate is almost full, operating at around 97% capacity.

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Sky News understands there continue to be particular pinch points across the country.

Southwest England struggled over the weekend with three space-related ‘lockouts’ – which means prisoners are held in police suites or transferred to other jails because there is no space.

One inmate is believed to have been transported from Exeter to Cardiff.

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “The new government inherited a prison system on the point of collapse. We took the necessary action to stop our prisons from overflowing and to protect the public.

“This is not a new scheme. Only less-serious offenders who meet a strict criteria are eligible, and the Prison Service can exclude anyone who can’t be managed safely in a category D prison.”

A prisoner who has served 12 years in jail for stealing a mobile phone was unable to attend a psychiatric assessment because of a lack of staff, his family claims.

According to psychiatrists, Thomas White has developed psychosis as a direct result of being handed a controversial indefinite jail term called imprisonment for public protection (IPP), which was abolished in 2012.

His sister has been campaigning for over a year to have him transferred to a hospital, which would require him to receive sign-off from two separate psychiatrists.

Ms White said her brother, who experiences religious hallucinations, was placed in segregation and needed three prison staff to release him from his cell – but they were not available due to staff shortages.

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Sky News understands that Lord Blunkett, the former Labour home secretary who introduced the IPP sentence but now campaigns for reform, has asked prisons minister Lord Timpson to investigate.

What are IPP sentences?

Thomas White, now aged 40, was one of more than 8,000 offenders who were given an IPP sentence – a type of open-ended prison sentence the courts could impose from 2005 until they were scrapped.

The sentence – which has been described as a form of “psychological torture” by human rights experts – was intended for serious violent and sexual offenders who posed a significant risk of serious harm to the public but whose crimes did not warrant a life term.

Although the government’s stated aim was public protection, concerns quickly grew that IPP sentences were being applied too broadly and catching more minor offenders, partly due to the fact that previous convictions were taken into account when determining whether someone posed a “significant risk”.

Thomas was sentenced to two years for stealing the mobile phone in a non-violent exchange back in 2012 – but because he had 16 previous convictions for theft and robberies, he was given an IPP sentence and has served 12 years.

The coalition government scrapped the sentence in 2012, but the change was not applied retrospectively, meaning 2,852 prisoners remain behind bars – including 1,227 who have never been released.

The new government is under increasing pressure to act on the IPP crisis given they were introduced by Lord Blunkett – who has since said he feels “deep regret” about the way the sentence was used.

‘My brother is being seriously failed’

In an email to Lord Blunkett, seen by Sky News, Ms White said: “My brother had a psychiatric appointment on the 1 November to see if he could be admitted to an outside hospital as he has to have two signatures to be transferred to an outside hospital.

“The system is nothing but criminal – people like my brother are being seriously failed.

“We waited a long time to have Thomas assessed again by the psychiatrist. We more than likely won’t get the assessment again.”

Read more:
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James Frith, the Labour MP for Bury North, said: “Thomas’ case highlights why these sentences were abolished over a decade ago.

“Thomas’s indefinite imprisonment has had a hugely detrimental impact on his mental and physical wellbeing. Thomas should be a patient, not a prisoner.

“We know the prison system is underfunded and overcapacity, but this is no excuse for failing Thomas. I have been working with Clara, Thomas’ sister, and I have written to the Lord Chancellor to raise Thomas’s case and the wider issues of IPPs.

“Thomas has been denied appropriate assessment and care for too long, we will not give up this fight for what is right.”

The Ministry of Justice does not comment on individual medical cases.

It is understood Lord Timpson will respond to Lord Blunkett in due course.