The Magnox Inquiry publishes its final report

On 4 March 2021, the Final Report of the Magnox Inquiry was published, bringing to an end the public inquiry started by the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on 27 March 2017. DLA Piper UK LLP acted as external legal advisers to the Inquiry.

The Inquiry was led by Steve Holliday, the former Chief Executive of National Grid. It followed the March 2017 decision of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) to terminate its contract with Cavendish Fluor Partnership for the management and decommissioning of 12 Magnox nuclear power sites. This contract (valued at circa GBP 6 billion) had been awarded following what the High Court found in its July 2016 judgment to be a ‘defective’ procurement process, in which the NDA had wrongly decided the outcome. Subsequently, two disappointed bidders, Energy Solutions and Bechtel, agreed settlement payments with the NDA totalling in the region of GBP 97.5 million.

The Inquiry’s Terms of Reference were to investigate the procurement process from its inception through contract award, the management of the contract by NDA to the point at which the NDA decided to terminate the contract, and the litigation that followed the contract award.

The Inquiry concluded that a series of errors and misjudgements were made by the NDA, including in relation to its procurement strategy, tender design and the way in which the High Court legal challenge had been managed and defended. The Inquiry further found that the NDA’s governance arrangements for the Magnox Competition were lacking in effectiveness.

The Inquiry made a number of recommendations relating to the NDA, as well as wider government and the public sector. The Government’s initial response to the Report, and its intentions in relation to acting on its findings and recommendations, are contained in the Ministerial statement at the time of publication: see here.

You can read the full report of the Inquiry here.