A ' Once in a Lifetime ' Acceleration through Nuclear Regulatory ' Reform '...
Steph Bloomer leads Mott MacDonald’ s Radioactive Waste and Radiation Protection team and is an SRP Council Member.
Laura Butchins is Chair of SRP ' s Legislation & Standards Committee and is a Principal Inspector at the Office for Nuclear Regulation.
In February 2025, the Prime Minister commissioned a Taskforce to review and reform UK civil and defence nuclear regulation. Enabling Nuclear Delivery Through Regulatory Reform was published in November 2025. The lead author is the economist John Fingleton and the report is colloquially referred to as ' The Fingleton Report ' but, in fact, the report was generated by a panel of experts: Mustafa Latif Aramesh( infrastructure and planning law), Dame Sue Ion( nuclear engineering, industry and skills), Mark Bassett( nuclear regulations and international) and Andrew Sherry( nuclear safety science and skills).
The report is described as a ' once in a lifetime chance ' for regulatory reform. A central theme is to simplify processes, accelerate delivery and restore proportionality, without weakening safety and environmental standards. The implications for radiation protection professionals are significant, reshaping expectations and career opportunities for those in the nuclear sector, with impacts that will reverberate into other sectors, and changes to standards, legislation and ways of working across Government, regulators and industry. The Taskforce did not make recommendations for the Devolved Governments but there will likely be indirect impacts.
The report makes 47 recommendations which were all accepted in the Government ' s Response. There are particularly ambitious timescales, with most of the recommendations to be implemented by the end of 2027.
The summary report usefully condenses the recommendations into five primary issues:
1. Fragmented Oversight 2. Disproportionate Decisions 3. Flawed Legislation 4. Government Indecision 5. Weak Industry Incentives
In March 2026, the Chancellor of the Exchequer wrote to nuclear dutyholders in an open letter asking them to act collectively with regulators to implement the Taskforce recommendations at pace and to prioritise outcomes over process, to challenge unnecessary complexity, to focus effort on the most safety-critical risks, and to adopt standardised, cost-effective approaches. The Chancellor asked organisations to assess their risk management culture and report back to her within six months on how they will deliver proportionate, timely and efficient outcomes.
The challenge for radiation protection professionals in the nuclear sector There is a clear statement at the beginning of Chapter 1:“ There is no intent to weaken nuclear safety” and that“ Reform must not undermine safety standards” which may provide some comfort to radiation protection professionals. However, the report clearly sets out the challenge to the profession, which will be to interpret and implement the recommendations by seeking out innovative approaches to meet safety standards at pace.
10 Radiation Protection Today www. srp-rpt. uk