A decision by the MoJ to agree to a 10-year lease for a prison where dangerous levels of a radioactive gas had been identified is projected to cost the UK taxpayer more than £100 million, a parliamentary spending watchdog has found.
A Deal Signed ''Under Duress'
The 2022 deal to rent HMP Dartmoor was finalised "in a state of alarm" by senior officials who were seeking to secure prison beds, the panel stated.
This category C prison, which accommodated many sex offenders, was evacuated in 2024 after radon levels as high as 10 times the acceptable limit were recorded in some areas. The authorities has since confirmed it was informed that "high readings" of the gas were found in 2020.
Radon, a invisible and odourless naturally occurring gas, is responsible for about 1,100 lung cancer-related deaths in the UK annually, according to public health authorities.
Failure to Negotiate a 'Favorable Agreement'
A analysis issued by the committee concluded that civil servants from the prison service did not manage to negotiate "a good deal" and signed the lease in 2022 before performing additional radon surveys.
"Under the lease agreement, the department cannot end the lease until at least December 2033. In total, the prison service is currently spending around £4 million per year for an uninhabitable prison. This includes rent, business rates and security costs," the report noted.
"On top of this, the taxpayer must pay additional costs – around £68 million – on structural works to the Dartmoor site over the term of the lease," the report added.
An Absolute Disgrace 'From Top to Bottom'
The committee's Conservative chair labelled the MoJ's stewardship of HMP Dartmoor as "a scandal, from top to bottom".
He stated: "We heard claims that the rental of this uninhabitable building, identified for years by the prison service to be choked with radon gas with all the health risks that involved, was sensible, driven by the requirement for prison places."
"We dismisses this justification completely. Dartmoor seems to the committee [to be] a textbook example of a government agency grasping at a fix, any solution, under intense pressure," he said.
"Government must now respond to us on what it has understood from this disastrous episode."
Evacuation and Relocation of Prisoners
The move to shutter the jail, leading to the movement of 682 offenders, followed years of monitoring and efforts to lower the radon levels. Staff at the prison began checking levels in 2010, but the remaining inmates and staff were not relocated until July 2024.
Questions have since been raised about whether the prison service could have acted sooner.
In a parliamentary response in July last year, the MoJ said: "Elevated radon readings were first found at Dartmoor in 2020." Other records show that radon gas levels exceeding the safe limit were also found as far back as 2007.
Legal Claims and Ongoing Probe
Over 500 former inmates and prison officers are filing compensation claims against the government, alleging their health was endangered.
An inquiry into radon levels at the prison begun by the workplace safety regulator in 2023 is still continuing.
The national chair of the Prison Officers Association welcomed the report. "It is disgraceful that such a failure has not resulted in consequences for the senior decision makers that not only put everyone within Dartmoor prison at risk but also squandered millions of pounds of tax revenue," he stated.
Defence of the Lease Agreement
Appearing before MPs in October, the MoJ's top civil servant defended the choice to sign the 10-year Dartmoor lease in 2022.
"At that time, the prison system was at risk of running out of prison places, and Dartmoor supplied over 600 places," she explained. "A sensible and pragmatic decision was taken in March, when the complete data that we have now was not to hand, that it was necessary, given the crises the government were dealing with, to execute the lease and keep Dartmoor open."
A MoJ representative said: "This decision was taken in 2022. This government inherited a critical situation in our prisons system, where prisons were on the verge of failure, risking a total collapse in law and order."
