A move by the Ministry of Justice to enter into a decade-long rental agreement for a prison where dangerous levels of a poisonous gas had been found is projected to cost the UK taxpayer in excess of £100 million, a government spending watchdog has found.
An Agreement Signed 'In a Blind Panic'
The lease signed in 2022 to lease HMP Dartmoor was signed "in a state of alarm" by high-ranking officials who were looking to secure prison beds, the committee reported.
This category C prison, which held many sex offenders, was shut down in 2024 after the radioactive gas levels reaching 10 times the safe limit were recorded in certain locations. The government has since confirmed it was cognisant that "high readings" of the gas were found in 2020.
Radon, a invisible and odourless naturally occurring gas, is causes about 1,100 lung cancer-related deaths in the UK every year, according to public health agencies.
Failure to Negotiate a 'Favorable Agreement'
A analysis issued by the committee said that civil servants from the prison service did not manage to negotiate "a good deal" and signed the lease in 2022 before carrying out subsequent radon testing.
"Under the lease agreement, the department cannot exit the lease until at least December 2033. In total, the prison service is currently paying around £4 million per year for an empty prison. This includes lease payments, business rates and security costs," the report said.
"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.
An Absolute Disgrace 'From Top to Bottom'
The committee's Tory chair said the Ministry of Justice's management of HMP Dartmoor as "an absolute disgrace, from top to bottom".
He stated: "We heard claims that the leasing of this uninhabitable building, identified for years by the prison service to be choked with radon gas with all the dangers that involved, was reasonable, driven by the requirement for prison places."
"Our committee rejects this excuse outright. Dartmoor seems to the committee [to be] a perfect example of a government agency reaching for a answer, any solution, in a blind panic," he said.
"Government must now reply to us on what it has learned from this catastrophic failure."
Closure and Relocation of Prisoners
The choice to shutter the jail, leading to the relocation of 682 offenders, followed years of testing and attempts to mitigate the radon levels. Staff at the prison began checking levels in 2010, but the remaining inmates and staff were not moved out until July 2024.
Inquiries have since been raised about whether the prison service could have responded more quickly.
In a parliamentary response in July last year, the MoJ said: "Raised radon readings were first detected at Dartmoor in 2020." Other records suggest that radon gas levels exceeding the safe limit were also found as far back as 2007.
Lawsuits and Ongoing Investigation
Over 500 ex- inmates and prison officers are filing legal claims against the state, arguing their safety was put at risk.
An probe into radon levels at the prison initiated by the Health and Safety Executive in 2023 remains continuing.
The leader of the Prison Officers Association applauded the committee's findings. "It is shocking that such a failure has not led to sanctions for the high-ranking decision makers that not only put everyone within Dartmoor prison at risk but also wasted millions of pounds of tax revenue," he stated.
Justification of the Decision
Testifying to MPs in October, the MoJ's permanent secretary justified the decision to enter into the 10-year Dartmoor lease in 2022.
"At the moment, the prison system was at threat of running out of prison places, and Dartmoor offered over 600 places," she argued. "A pragmatic and pragmatic decision was made in March, when all the information that we have now was not to hand, that it was necessary, given the problems the government were dealing with, to execute the lease and keep Dartmoor open."
A MoJ representative commented: "This decision was taken in 2022. This government inherited a crisis in our prisons system, where prisons were on the brink of failure, risking a total collapse in public order."
