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A decision by the Ministry of Justice to sign a 10-year rental agreement for a prison where dangerous levels of a poisonous gas had been identified is estimated to cost the UK taxpayer in excess of £100 million, a official spending watchdog has found.

An Agreement Signed ''Under Duress'

The 2022 agreement to rent HMP Dartmoor was agreed "in a blind panic" by high-ranking civil servants who were looking to secure prison beds, the watchdog stated.

This medium-security prison, which held many sex offenders, was closed in 2024 after radon levels up to 10 times the safe limit were measured in parts of the facility. The authorities has since admitted it was informed that "raised readings" of the gas were detected in 2020.

Radon, a colourless and scentless radioactive gas, is causes about 1,100 lung cancer deaths in the UK each year, according to health security agencies.

Oversight to Secure a 'Favorable Agreement'

A findings released by the committee stated that officials from the prison service did not manage to secure "a good deal" and agreed to the lease in 2022 prior to conducting subsequent radon testing.

"Under the lease agreement, the ministry cannot terminate the lease until at least December 2033. In total, 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 noted.

"Additionally, the government must pay further costs – around £68 million – on building upgrades to the Dartmoor site over the term of the lease," the report continued.

A Complete Failure ''At Every Level'

The committee's Conservative chair labelled the MoJ's handling of HMP Dartmoor as "a complete failure, from top to bottom".

He remarked: "We heard assertions that the leasing of this unusable building, known for years by the prison service to be contaminated by radon gas with all the health risks that entailed, was sensible, driven by the demand for prison places."

"The panel dismisses this rationale outright. Dartmoor appears to the committee [to be] a textbook example of a department reaching for a solution, any solution, under intense pressure," he said.

"The authorities must now reply to us on what it has learned from this costly mistake."

Evacuation and Relocation of Inmates

The move to close the jail, leading to the relocation of 682 offenders, followed years of observation and measures to reduce the radon levels. Prison officers at the prison began monitoring levels in 2010, but the final prisoners and staff were not relocated until July 2024.

Questions have since been posed about whether the prison service could have taken action earlier.

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

Lawsuits and Ongoing Probe

More than 500 former prisoners and prison officers are bringing compensation claims against the state, claiming their wellbeing was compromised.

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

The national chair of the Prison Officers Association applauded the report. "It is disgraceful that such a debacle has not yielded sanctions for the senior officials that not only put everyone within Dartmoor prison at danger but also wasted millions of pounds of taxpayer funds," he said.

Defence of the Decision

Speaking 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 facing a shortage of prison spaces, and Dartmoor supplied over 600 places," she explained. "A pragmatic and pragmatic decision was made in March, when all the information that we have now was not known, that it was necessary, given the problems the government were dealing with, to sign 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 complete collapse in law and order."