Political uncertainty continues to dominate the headlines and our external environment remains far from clear.

In this landscape, being an effective and efficient regulator is more important than ever. We’re moving to a stronger position to deliver flexibly in response to the changing environment, with public safety firmly at the heart of what we do – reaffirmed in Mark Foy’s ‘first of a kind’ Chief Nuclear Inspector (CNI) report, published last month.  

I am grateful for the collective efforts our Senior Leadership Team and staff have made in placing significant focus on forecasting and deployment of resources, as we continue to press ahead with modernisation and streamlining our processes through our Well Informed Regulatory Decisions (WIReD) project.  And, whatever the eventual outcome of Brexit, ONR stands ready to deliver on our international safeguards obligations when the UK exits Euratom.  

Looking further ahead, the ONR strategy that will take us up to 2025 is now in final stages of development. It reflects both the external environment and your views, which have been remarkably consistent: working in a more agile way, greater operational and international co-operation, a focus on economic impact, and embracing greater innovation. We hope to share it with you later in the year and look forward to hearing what you think.

And it isn’t just our strategy we need your views on. A peer-review took place in October that will tell us what the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) thinks of our regulation, but we want to hear from you too. In our 2017 stakeholder survey, you described us as professional, trusted and fair and, as you might expect, we’ve been working on what you said we could do better.  We are not complacent: we’ll shortly be inviting you to share your views on where you think we are, two years on.

I am grateful, as always, for your honest feedback and willingness to support our work. And you can be sure that, as always, we’re on it.

Adriènne Kelbie
Chief Executive