MoD police at nuclear base sacked for slacking

DOZENS of armed police have lost their jobs for ‘slacking off’ while they were meant to be guarding Britain’s nuclear bomb factory.

More than 30 Ministry of Defence Police (MDP) officers were either sacked or allowed to quit after bosses discovered they had not been patrolling the top-security site properly – possibly for years.

The force uncovered ‘potentially systemic and long-running failures in duty and supervision by officers’ at Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) Burghfield, the 225-acre site in Berkshire where warheads for the Trident submarines are assembled.

The mass misconduct involved ‘very serious but isolated instances of numbers of officers failing to carry out their duties’, internal documents seen by The Mail on Sunday show.

After the ‘irregularities in MDP patrol activity’ were identified in August 2013, investigators spent months studying CCTV footage to find out who had not been doing their jobs properly. They then gathered 25 officers in a parade room and read out the names of those who were being served with misconduct notices, a ‘distressing and demotivating event’ that came to be known as Black Tuesday, according to a review completed earlier this year.

Eventually, six MDP officers were dismissed for gross misconduct, 25 resigned or retired and another six were given warnings – while ten had no further action taken against them.

But Len Jackson, a former police watchdog who sits on the MDP Committee, wrote in his review it ‘remains a major bone of contention at every level’ that ‘no one above the rank of sergeant has ever been disciplined’. Officers felt bosses should have ‘solved all the patrolling issues’ by giving out a ‘strong and final warning’ then sending everyone back to work.

The MDP is now using ‘technology to track officer movements and activity by location’, according to an annual report. There was a separate ‘regrettable incident’ at AWE Aldermaston that led to two MDP officers being dismissed and nine resigning or retiring, but the MoD refused to reveal details on security grounds.

Last night, David Cullen, research manager at the pro-disarmament group Nuclear Information Service, said: ‘Instead of senior officers being held to account, there was a bungled investigation. If the MDP can’t even properly investigate wrongdoing in its own ranks, why should anyone trust them to guard nuclear weapons?’

A military spokesman said: ‘There was never any threat to safety or security at the sites.’