🔗 Share this article

A decision by the MoJ to agree to a decade-long lease for a prison where elevated levels of a poisonous gas had been found is expected to cost the UK taxpayer in excess of £100 million, a government spending oversight committee has concluded.

An Agreement Signed ''Rashly'

The 2022 deal to rent HMP Dartmoor was finalised "under severe pressure" by senior civil servants who were aiming to secure prison places, the committee said.

This category C prison, which accommodated many individuals convicted of sexual offences, was evacuated in 2024 after radon levels as high as 10 times the safe limit were recorded in parts of the facility. The government has since confirmed it was aware that "raised readings" of the gas were discovered in 2020.

Radon, a invisible and scentless radioactive gas, is responsible for about 1,100 lung cancer-related deaths in the UK annually, according to health security agencies.

Failure to Negotiate a 'Favorable Agreement'

A report released by the committee concluded that representatives from the prison service were unable to negotiate "a good deal" and agreed to the lease in 2022 prior to performing additional radon testing.

"Under the lease agreement, the ministry cannot end the lease until at least December 2033. Overall, the prison service is currently shelling out around £4 million per year for an empty prison. This encompasses rent, business rates and security costs," the report said.

"Additionally, the public must pay additional costs – around £68 million – on structural works to the Dartmoor site over the term of the lease," the report stated.

A Complete Failure ''At Every Level'

The committee's Conservative chair described the Ministry of Justice's handling of HMP Dartmoor as "a scandal, from top to bottom".

He remarked: "We heard assertions that the leasing of this uninhabitable building, identified for years by the prison service to be choked with radon gas with all the health risks that carried, was prudent, driven by the demand for prison places."

"We dismisses this rationale outright. Dartmoor appears to the committee [to be] a textbook example of a department reaching for a solution, any solution, in a blind panic," he continued.

"Government must now respond to us on what it has understood from this disastrous episode."

Closure and Transfer of Prisoners

The decision to shutter the jail, forcing the transfer of 682 prisoners, followed years of testing and attempts to reduce the radon levels. Employees at the prison began checking levels in 2010, but the final prisoners and staff were not moved out until July 2024.

Concerns have since been asked about whether the prison service could have responded more quickly.

In a parliamentary response in July last year, the MoJ stated: "Raised radon readings were first identified at Dartmoor in 2020." Other reports show that radon gas levels exceeding the safe limit were also found as far back as 2007.

Legal Claims and Ongoing Probe

Over 500 ex- inmates and prison officers are bringing compensation claims against the government, arguing their safety was endangered.

An probe into radon levels at the prison launched by the workplace safety regulator in 2023 is still continuing.

The head of the Prison Officers Association applauded the report. "It is shocking that such a catastrophe has not yielded consequences for the high-ranking decision makers that not only placed everyone within Dartmoor prison at danger but also wasted millions of pounds of public money," he commented.

Defence of the Decision

Appearing before MPs in October, the MoJ's top civil servant justified 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 spaces, and Dartmoor provided over 600 places," she explained. "A pragmatic and practical judgement was made in March, when the complete data that we have now was not known, that it was necessary, given the crises the government were facing, to execute the lease and keep Dartmoor open."

A MoJ representative commented: "This action was made in 2022. This government took over a crisis in our prisons system, where prisons were on the verge of failure, risking a total collapse in public order."