A choice by the Ministry of Justice to sign a decade-long rental agreement for a prison where dangerous levels of a toxic gas had been found is estimated to cost the UK taxpayer more than £100 million, a official spending oversight committee has determined.
A Deal Signed ''Under Duress'
The 2022 deal to rent HMP Dartmoor was agreed "in a blind panic" by high-ranking civil servants who were looking to ensure prison beds, the watchdog stated.
This category C prison, which housed many individuals convicted of sexual offences, was shut down in 2024 after the radioactive gas levels reaching 10 times the safe limit were measured in parts of the facility. The government has since admitted it was aware that "high readings" of the gas were found in 2020.
Radon, a invisible and scentless naturally occurring gas, is causes about 1,100 lung cancer deaths in the UK every year, according to health security authorities.
Oversight to Negotiate a 'Favorable Agreement'
A report released 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 performing additional radon surveys.
"Under the contract terms, the department cannot terminate the lease until at least December 2033. Overall, the prison service is currently spending around £4 million per year for an unusable prison. This covers lease payments, business rates and security costs," the report noted.
"Furthermore, the taxpayer must pay further 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 Conservative chair described the MoJ's handling of HMP Dartmoor as "a scandal, from top to bottom".
He commented: "We heard claims that the leasing of this unusable building, identified for years by the prison service to be choked with radon gas with all the dangers that involved, was sensible, driven by the demand for prison places."
"The panel outright rejects this rationale completely. Dartmoor appears to the committee [to be] a perfect example of a government agency reaching for a fix, any solution, in a state of crisis," he added.
"Officials must now reply to us on what it has learned from this costly mistake."
Closure and Relocation of Prisoners
The choice to evacuate the jail, necessitating the transfer of 682 prisoners, followed years of monitoring and efforts to lower the radon levels. Prison officers at the prison began checking levels in 2010, but the last inmates and staff were not moved out until July 2024.
Concerns have since been asked about whether the prison service could have taken action earlier.
In a written answer in July last year, the MoJ stated: "Elevated radon readings were first detected at Dartmoor in 2020." Other information indicate that radon gas levels higher than the safe limit were also found as far back as 2007.
Legal Claims and Ongoing Probe
More than 500 former prisoners and prison officers are bringing lawsuits against the state, alleging their safety was endangered.
An investigation into radon levels at the prison launched by the workplace safety regulator in 2023 remains continuing.
The leader of the Prison Officers Association applauded the report. "It is abhorrent that such a catastrophe has not yielded accountability for the high-ranking officials that not only placed everyone within Dartmoor prison at danger but also squandered millions of pounds of tax revenue," he commented.
Justification of the Lease Agreement
Testifying to MPs in October, the MoJ's senior official supported 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 capacity, and Dartmoor supplied over 600 places," she said. "A reasonable and pragmatic judgement was made in March, when all the information that we have now was not available, that it was essential, given the crises the government were facing, to sign the lease and keep Dartmoor open."
A Ministry of Justice representative stated: "This decision was made in 2022. This government inherited a critical situation in our prisons system, where prisons were on the brink of collapse, threatening a complete collapse in public order."
