A decision by the Ministry of Justice to sign a 10-year rental agreement for a prison where dangerous levels of a radioactive gas had been identified is projected to burden the public purse over £100 million, a official spending watchdog has determined.
A Deal Signed ''Rashly'
The lease signed in 2022 to lease HMP Dartmoor was signed "under severe pressure" by senior civil servants who were seeking to secure prison beds, the committee stated.
This medium-security prison, which held many sex offenders, was closed in 2024 after the radioactive gas levels reaching 10 times the safe limit were found in certain locations. The government has since confirmed it was aware that "raised readings" of the gas were found in 2020.
Radon, a colourless and odourless radioactive gas, is causes about 1,100 lung cancer-related deaths in the UK annually, according to public health authorities.
Oversight to Secure a 'Good Deal'
A report issued by the committee concluded that officials from the prison service did not manage to secure "a good deal" and agreed to the lease in 2022 prior to carrying out further radon tests.
"Under the terms of the deal, the ministry cannot terminate the lease until at least December 2033. In total, the prison service is currently paying around £4 million per year for an uninhabitable prison. This includes rent, business rates and security costs," the report detailed.
"Furthermore, the taxpayer must pay additional costs – around £68 million – on building upgrades to the Dartmoor site over the term of the lease," the report added.
A Complete Failure ''At Every Level'
The committee's Tory chair described the MoJ's handling of HMP Dartmoor as "an absolute disgrace, from top to bottom".
He commented: "We heard arguments that the leasing of this unusable building, known for years by the prison service to be riddled with radon gas with all the dangers that carried, was reasonable, driven by the need for prison places."
"Our committee rejects this justification completely. Dartmoor seems to the committee [to be] a prime example of a government agency grasping at a answer, any solution, in a state of crisis," he said.
"The authorities must now respond to us on what it has understood from this costly mistake."
Closure and Transfer of Inmates
The choice to close the jail, forcing the transfer of 682 prisoners, followed years of monitoring and efforts to mitigate the radon levels. Prison officers at the prison began checking levels in 2010, but the final inmates and staff were not moved out until July 2024.
Concerns have since been posed about whether the prison service could have responded more quickly.
In a official statement in July last year, the MoJ said: "Elevated radon readings were first found at Dartmoor in 2020." Other information suggest that radon gas levels higher than the safe limit were also detected as far back as 2007.
Legal Claims and Continuing Investigation
More than 500 former prisoners and prison officers are pursuing legal claims against the government, claiming their wellbeing was compromised.
An probe into radon levels at the prison initiated by the workplace safety regulator in 2023 is still ongoing.
The head of the Prison Officers Association welcomed the report. "It is disgraceful that such a debacle has not resulted in consequences for the senior individuals that not only placed everyone within Dartmoor prison at risk but also wasted millions of pounds of tax revenue," he stated.
Justification of the Decision
Appearing before MPs in October, the MoJ's senior official justified the choice to sign the 10-year Dartmoor lease in 2022.
"At the moment, the prison system was at risk of running out of prison places, and Dartmoor provided over 600 places," she said. "A reasonable and practical judgement was made in March, when all the information that we have now was not to hand, that it was necessary, given the crises the government were facing, to sign the lease and keep Dartmoor open."
A MoJ representative stated: "This action was made in 2022. This government took over a critical situation in our prisons system, where prisons were on the brink of failure, threatening a complete collapse in law and order."
