Nuclear Energy and Natural Resources Environment Nuclear Law

The Nuclear Regulation Bill: A Regulatory Reset for the Nuclear Sector

28th July 2026

Introduction

The King’s Speech of May 2026 confirmed the Government’s intention to introduce a Nuclear Regulation Bill (the “Bill”), signalling what ministers have described as the dawn of a “new era of British nuclear energy generation”.[1] The Bill represents the most significant proposed overhaul of the UK’s nuclear regulatory architecture in decades. The Bill will be the legislative vehicle through which the Government intends to implement the 47 recommendations of the independent Nuclear Regulatory Review 2025,[2] led by John Fingleton (the “Fingleton Review”), which delivered an assessment of a system it found to be “unnecessarily bureaucratic”.[3]

There is very little information in the King’s Speech as to the proposed content of the Bill. The King’s Speech did however state that the Bill “will also take forward recommendations of the [Fingleton] Review and encourage a new era of British nuclear energy generation”.[4] Therefore, the Fingleton Review – as well as the Government’s response to it[5] – gives a sense of the types of issues the Bill will no doubt seek to address.

Readers will be aware that the Fingleton Review concluded that the existing regulatory framework has made the UK “the most expensive place in the world to build nuclear projects”.[6] A single nuclear project may be subject to oversight from up to six regulators in the civil sector and as many as eight in the defence sector, each operating under separate statutory duties and guidance, with no single designated lead regulator responsible for resolving conflicts or driving pace.[7] An objective of the Bill will therefore be to seek to improve upon this fragmented apparatus and replace it with a streamlined and proportionate regime – while, importantly, maintaining the UK’s high standards of nuclear safety and environmental protection.

This article addresses some of the areas of reform which might be included in the Bill in due course (based on the Fingleton Review) namely:

A Commission for Nuclear Regulation (Recommendation 2).
A lead regulator (Recommendation 3).
Environmental and Habitats Assessment (Recommendations 12 and 13).
Risk Management and Proportionality (Recommendations 6 and 8).

Objectives of the Bill

According to the background briefing notes published alongside the King’s Speech, the Bill will pursue three overarching objectives:[8]

Overhaul existing regulation: giving regulators greater clarity and direction, streamlining the regulatory institutional framework and strengthening regulatory capability and capacity.
Embed a proportionate, outcomes-focussed regulatory and legislative framework: ensuring effort is focused on managing real risk rather than unnecessary process, while maintaining world-class safety and environmental standards.
Improve the coordination and speed of regulatory decision-making: reducing duplication and delay to support timely delivery alongside safety and environmental protection.

The Bill will include measures to support more “efficient, proportionate and coordinated regulation”.[9]

A Commission for Nuclear Regulation

A centrepiece of the Fingleton Review’s structural recommendations is the proposed establishment of a Commission for Nuclear Regulation (the “Commission”) (Recommendation 2).[10] This would not be a new regulator but rather a consolidation of the decision-making currently dispersed across the Office for Nuclear Regulation (“ONR”), the Environment Agency (“EA”), the Defence Nuclear Safety Regulator (“DNSR”), and other bodies.[11] The Commission would comprise five full-time members presided over by the Chief Nuclear Inspector (“CNI”), with two Deputy CNIs (one civil, one defence) as new statutory roles.[12] It would consolidate oversight and legal authority across safety, security, safeguards, environment, planning, and defence into a single independent body. One of the bases for proposing this commission-based model are domestic examples, including the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, and nuclear regulatory commissions in other countries.[13]

As the Fingleton Review expressly noted, the establishment of the Commission and accompanying measures will require primary legislation and therefore this is something that can reasonably be expected to be included in the Bill.[14] This was confirmed in the Government’s response, stating that it will legislate to establish this new Commission, and the Commission will be fully functioning by Summer 2028.

Beyond the Bill creating such a Commission, the next question is the statutory powers it might be given. The Fingleton Review gave examples of such powers, including that the Commission could be empowered to set nuclear regulatory guidance, resolve disputes between regulators, decide planning appeals, and give directions to regulators on the conduct of ongoing applications.[15] The Fingleton Review further proposed that the Commission’s powers would “include the vires of existing regulators of nuclear projects and hold parallel powers with them”, acting as the final sign-off authority for substantial regulatory decisions and delegated policies, while intervening only in substantial matters.[16] The suggestion was that novel or contentious decisions should be escalated quickly to the Commission for decision. Examples were drawn from international precedents including the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, France’s Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire, and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.[17]

In terms of the Bill, specific provision will therefore need to be made to create the Commission as a statutory body, define its primary and secondary duties, establish the new statutory roles suggested (including the Deputy CNI) and set out the Commission’s relationship with existing regulators established under the Energy Act 2013 and the Environment Act 1995. The Bill would also need to define the scope of decisions reserved to the Commission versus those retained by individual regulators for day-to-day enforcement.

This is arguably the most structurally novel recommendation in the Fingleton Review and the one most likely to define the Bill’s architecture. In terms of the specific wording of these provisions, other statutory schemes like that establishing the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee under the Bank of England Act 1998 might give an overall sense of the structure of the provisions. However, the detail will need to be considered for the specific circumstances of the nuclear industry.

A Lead Regulator

Related to the above, the Fingleton Review recommends an immediate formal lead regulator model, with ONR as the default lead for the nuclear sector (Recommendation 3).[18]

A key concern in the Fingleton Review was overlapping regulation. An example of overlapping regulation is that on sites regulated by both the ONR and DNSR, dutyholders are required to comply with two nuclear regulatory regimes, often for the same asset. This dual oversight can lead to duplication of effort and can complicate regulatory engagement and delivery. In some cases, sites have adopted informal ‘lead regulator’ arrangements to streamline interactions and clarify regulatory primacy.[19] However, such practices remain the exception rather than the norm.

This interim measure can largely be achieved through administrative arrangements and memoranda of understanding without statutory change, though one would anticipate that full effect would be given through the eventual primary legislation.

Of further significance is that the Fingleton Review recommends a merger of the DNSR with ONR to create a unified safety regulator with a specific defence enclave (Recommendation 4).[20] Additionally, under this proposal, the ONR should be given concurrent statutory powers for radiological substances alongside the EA, so that only one regulator oversees radioactive substances on any individual nuclear site.[21] These changes would require amendments to the Energy Act 2013, which established ONR, and potentially to the Nuclear Installations Act 1965.

Environmental and Habitats Assessment

A significant part of the Fingleton Review concerned environmental assessment and permitting. The Fingleton Review stated that the application of Habitats Regulations Assessments (“HRA”) and Environmental Impact Assessments (“EIA”) often lacked proportionality. The Fingleton Review cited examples of measures to illustrate these concerns, including in the context of Hinkley Point C[22] and Sizewell C.[23] For example, Hinkley Point C had to develop, construct, and operate a water treatment plant to remove the naturally occurring metals and allow the groundwater to be discharged from the construction site into the estuary. The Fingleton Review flagged that these measures caused delays and added about £60 million to the project cost.[24]

In respect of the Habitats regime, the Fingleton Review proposed that:[25]“there should be an alternative route to compliance with the Habitats Directive whereby a developer can make a substantial up-front payment before a project begins and without any assessment is [sic] done”.[26] This mechanism is likely to attract scrutiny, as it represents a significant departure from the site specific mitigation approach that has characterised environmental regulation in the sector to date. Amendments to the Habitats Regulations themselves could be made by secondary legislation, but the creation of an entirely new alternative compliance pathway, as suggested, would require primary legislation. If the Government do take this suggestion forward it would be a novel mechanism allowing developers to pay into a nature fund in lieu of site-specific HRA, representing a significant departure from the current approach taken.

In respect of EIA, the Fingleton Review noted the plans that are already underway following section 152 of the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023 to include powers for Environmental Outcome Reports (“EORs”) to replace EIA. However, the Fingleton Review was critical of EORs and stated that the “new regime appears to be largely the same, or worse in introducing uncertainty in the mitigation required”.[27] The Fingleton Review therefore proposed further measures. These five measures proposed in the review included that the EIA Regulations themselves should be amended in a variety of ways, including that: (i) a “principle of proportionality” be included whereby only information necessary to determine the issue should be required and so that would exclude existing decisions or outstanding matters that would be addressed by other regulatory regimes; and (ii) make clear, through an interpretive provision, that “likely significant effects” does not require complete, as opposed to proportionate, data about a potential impact.

In the Government’s response to the Fingleton Review under objective 2, “Ensuring effective planning and environmental assessments” it said it would be streamlining the EIA regime by publishing its roadmap with a view to implementing EORs by December 2027. In terms of what the Government hope to achieve in terms of EORs in this context, its response says, “we can retain the value and rigour of assessments whilst addressing the issues of unnecessary duplication, risk aversion and inefficiency that have developed over the past 40 years”.[28] As the Fingleton Review noted, there are clearly issues with how the current system operates. However, the key question is whether EORs will address those issues the industry is facing. The promise in the EOR system is said to be that it will bring benefits by way of an opportunity to streamline and consolidate regulations. Nonetheless, the significant risk is the replacement of an established, legally tested and stable regime with an untested one, creating legal uncertainty. The Office for Environmental Protection prepared a report on EOR for the Government in 2023 and concluded that the proposals for EOR, as set out in 2023, could create risks by moving from a well-established regime such as EIA.[29]

Risk Management and Proportionality

The Fingleton Review identifies the application of the ALARP (As Low As Reasonably Practicable) principle as a source of disproportionate delay.[30] The ALARP principle, derived from the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 (“HSWA”), requires dutyholders to reduce risks so far as is reasonably practicable.

Recommendation 6 proposes that Government, not individual regulators, should define the tolerability of risk for the nuclear sector, using directions under section 92 of the Energy Act 2013 (to the ONR) and section 40 of the Environment Act 1995 (to the EA).[31] The recommendation in the Fingleton Review would be that the direction would establish that risks at or below broadly acceptable levels are deemed to be ALARP and ALARA (As Low As Reasonably Achievable) unless there are strong and compelling reasons to the contrary.[32]

Related to Recommendation 6, is that in Recommendation 8 the Fingleton Review proposed defining the meaning of proportionality in the HWSA.[33] This would involve secondary legislation under section 50 of the HSWA to clarify the meaning of proportionality. The Fingleton Review suggested that the test should not be whether a measure is grossly disproportionate, but instead what is proportionate taking into account a multi-faceted consideration of the level of risk. The Fingleton Review emphasised that inconsistent case law added further uncertainty.[34] The proposed secondary legislation would replace the “gross disproportion” test with a multi-faceted proportionality test, requiring consideration of: the nature of the hazard; the likelihood and scale of impact; the cost, time, and difficulty involved; relevant policy guidance; and whether the measure might prevent a desirable activity from taking place.[35] The Government’s guidance document R2P2 (‘Reducing Risks, Protecting People’) would be updated accordingly.[36]

In terms of the Bill, while Recommendation 8 itself calls for secondary legislation under section 50 of the HSWA, the Bill may need to provide the enabling power or amend the HSWA to ensure this recalibration has clear statutory footing, particularly given the conflicting case law. This recommendation, if enacted, would have ramifications well beyond nuclear regulation and could have implications for the test for proportionality across all high-hazard industries governed by the HSWA.

Conclusion

The Bill represents a potential watershed moment for the UK’s nuclear sector. If delivered as described, the reforms should increase the pace, predictability, and proportionality of regulatory decision-making. The Bill’s passage through Parliament will warrant close attention, given its implications for planning, environmental permitting, judicial review, and the broader architecture of nuclear project delivery.

[1] Prime Minister’s Office, The King’s Speech 2026, dated 14 May 2026. The ‘Introduction from the Prime Minister’ stated on page 4: “The immediate challenge is to keep removing barriers to growth…It means encouraging a new era of British nuclear energy”.

[2] See Government response: Department for Energy Security & Net Zero, policy paper ‘Building our nuclear nation: government response to the Nuclear Regulatory Review 2025’ (dated 13 March 2026). Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/building-our-nuclear-nation-government-response-to-the-nuclear-regulatory-review-2025/building-our-nuclear-nation-government-response-to-the-nuclear-regulatory-review-2025-accessible-webpage.

[3] Prime Minister’s Office, The King’s Speech 2026, dated 14 May 2026 at page 107. See also Fingleton Review, paragraph 123.

[4] Prime Minister’s Office, The King’s Speech 2026, dated 14 May 2026 at pages 9 and 107.

[5] The Government’s response to the Fingleton Review outlined plans to take forward all of the recommendations by the end of 2027.

[6] Prime Minister’s Office, The King’s Speech 2026, dated 14 May 2026 at page 107. See also Fingleton Review, paragraph 583.

[7] Prime Minister’s Office, The King’s Speech 2026, dated 14 May 2026 at page 108.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Fingleton Review, paragraphs 142-165.

[11] Ibid, paragraph 145.

[12] Ibid, Recommendation 2.

[13] Ibid, paragraph 157.