I hope this newsletter finds you safe and well. Responding to COVID-19, since March, has brought a sharper focus on the health and wellbeing of our staff and of those we regulate, and for each of us, has been a clarion call to ensure we stay well for the long run.

The ONR team has adapted well to suddenly working primarily at home, and have ensured that we continue to be able to regulate and operate, albeit with some new limitations. For the first time, we’ve completed year end accounts remotely, welcomed new colleagues working solely from home and delivered training via video. Our work with stakeholders has never been busier, with a lot of enquiries about our dutyholder operations, our regulation, and input to government thinking about nuclear matters. 

Over time, our response is changing in light of public health advice and regulatory need. We are increasing our on-site regulatory work across our portfolio, being mindful that remote working is not appropriate for the long term.  We’ll continue to inspect, assess and permission remotely where necessary to protect staff, workers on site, and the public around sites.

I was delighted to publish ONR’s Strategy 2020-25, explaining our aspirations and intent over the next 5 years. Our new mission ‘to protect society by securing safe nuclear operations’ gets straight to the point about why everyone in ONR wants to do their very best. Our new vision is clear - that we want to become a modern and more transparent ONR that delivers trusted outcomes and value. And thanks to good engagement with stakeholders, we’re proud that it is a strong and coherent strategy, reflecting our challenging operating environment, and built on collaboration.

Key changes will include improving regulatory consistency and proportionality, regulatory co-ordination and safety outcomes. We’ll review our charging strategy, ensuring our methodology is fair and transparent, and strive to be considered value for money. We want to be an exemplar of transparency and openness and will expand stakeholder engagement, improve our accessibility and proactively seek and use others’ feedback to help us learn. We also want to modernise, bringing in new tools to help us work better, and consider new ways of working based on our COVID-19 experience, opportunities and constraints.

I hope you enjoy this short round up of recent key activity, and introduction to Non-Executive Director, Dr Janet Wilson, who joined in April.

I’m grateful for your support, pragmatism and recognition that working through a pandemic is new to us all. Though none of us know when or how it will end, we do know that ONR is capable of responding in the short, medium and long term to protect society – and that will continue to drive us all. 

Please, take care and stay safe.

Best wishes

Adriènne Kelbie
Chief Executive

Katie Day, Director of Policy and Communications

We’ve had a busy few months preparing some of our key publications. Alongside our Strategy 2020-25, we published our annual Corporate Plan which sets out our priorities for 2020/21, and explains how we have adapted our plans in light of COVID-19.

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Mark McAllister, ONR Chair

I wrote last year in our October newsletter about the priorities during my first six months as Chair. These focused on meeting our staff and stakeholders and building a clear picture of the work we do and future needs. I commented that there were both challenges and opportunities for ONR in the coming months, although we couldn’t have predicted quite how challenging 2020 would turn out to be.

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We chatted with new Non-Executive Director (NED), Dr Janet Wilson, about the challenges of starting a new job during lockdown, and how she’s already making a positive impact on the organisation.

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