The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)

Nuclear upgrade ‘failings’

Defence: MoD under fire over delays and soaring costs of Trident project

- BY GAVIN CORDON

Poor management of the infrastruc­ture to build and maintain Britain’s Trident nuclear deterrent has led to years of delays and cost overruns of more than £1 billion, the Whitehall spending watchdog has warned.

The National Audit Office (NAO) said failure of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to learn from past mistakes meant key projects to upgrade the Defence Nuclear Enterprise were over-budget and behind schedule.

It said “inappropri­ate” contracts with outside contractor­s and beginning building work on facilities before the designs were “sufficient­ly mature” had added hundreds of millions of pounds to costs.

And it highlighte­d a lack of technical skills within the MoD which resulted in the “gold-plating” of designs as staff were unable to challenge regulators when they insisted upon overlycomp­lex specificat­ions.

The findings come as the prime minister’s chief adviser Dominic Cummings is preparing to launch a far-reaching review of defence spending amid concerns that billions are being squandered on botched procuremen­ts.

The NAO examined three programmes within the nuclear enterprise to replace ageing facilities, some dating back to the 1950s:

• Project Mensa to construct a new nuclear warhead assembly and disassembl­y facility at the Atomic Weapons Establishm­ent site at Burghfield

• The building of a new core production capability at the Rolls Royce site at Raynesway to produce the latest nuclear reactor core designs

• The primary build facility at the BAE Systems shipyard at Barrow-in-Furness, where the new Dreadnough­t class submarines to carry the

Trident nuclear missiles will be built.

While the three projects were valued at £2.5bn, the NAO found that costs had risen by £1.35bn with delays running at between 1.7 and 6.3 years.

The NAO said it was “disappoint­ing” the MoD was continuing to repeat mistakes made in the last cycle of investment in the nuclear enterprise in the 1980s and 1990s.

Among the specific problems highlighte­d, the NAO said delays to project Mensa had meant the MoD having to spend an additional £21 million keeping existing facilities going.

Gareth Davies, the head of the NAO, said: “While these infrastruc­ture projects are complex, the MoD has encountere­d similar challenges before in its nuclear work.

“Although it has recently introduced changes to enhance its oversight of the projects and improve its contracts with suppliers, it should have learnt earlier from past mistakes and the experience of others in the nuclear sector.”

 ??  ?? DETERRENT: Vanguard-class submarine HMS Vigilant is one of the UK’s four nuclear warhead-carrying submarines
DETERRENT: Vanguard-class submarine HMS Vigilant is one of the UK’s four nuclear warhead-carrying submarines

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