Operating expenditure at the Civil Nuclear Police Authority rose by almost £25 million during 2025-26, while reported workplace stress cases increased by 86% during a year of expansion, site closures and organisational change.
Operating expenditure at the Civil Nuclear Police Authority increased to £178.7 million during 2025-26, while reported workplace stress cases rose from 29 to 54, the UK Defence Journal understands.
The figures are contained in the CNPA’s Annual Report and Accounts, covering a year in which the Civil Nuclear Constabulary expanded its armed protection role to four non-nuclear energy sites while also managing the cessation of policing at older nuclear facilities. Total operating expenditure increased from £154.1 million in 2024-25 to £178.7 million, a rise of approximately £24.6 million or 16%. The Authority says £19.7 million of additional pay costs reflected the full-year effect of previous pay awards, higher employer pension and National Insurance contributions, and the transfer of Ministry of Defence Police personnel into the CNC as responsibility for the four additional sites changed hands.
Staff costs reached £131.1 million, compared with £111.3 million a year earlier, including £99.2 million in wages and salaries, £14 million in social security costs and £17.3 million in pension costs. Despite the increase in overall expenditure, the Authority spent less than had originally been approved for the year. Pay costs were below forecast because of vacancies and fewer new officers entering training than expected, while delayed project activity and lower-than-anticipated property maintenance costs also produced underspends. The CNPA said its standard operational activities achieved a breakeven position, although the accounts recorded £6 million more expenditure than income overall, mainly because of technical accounting adjustments and non-operational costs reimbursed by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.
Fifty-four workplace stress cases were reported during 2025-26, compared with 29 the previous year, an increase of 86%. Stress accounted for 21% of reported health and safety incidents. The CNPA says the increase partly reflects more systematic reporting, with its time-recording system checked daily and managers asked to submit a health and safety report where an employee is recorded as absent because of work-related stress. Twelve of the 54 cases were directly linked to the cessation of policing at Hunterston B and Hinkley Point B, or the relocation of Corporate Learning and Development functions to the firearms training facility at Bisley. The organisation said stress risk assessments and support measures had been introduced in anticipation of some of those changes.
Reported injuries also increased from 97 to 119, a rise of 22.6%. Sixty-three per cent occurred within the Training Division, with the Authority saying a large number were associated with the dynamic and realistic training undertaken by officers. Fifteen incidents were reportable under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations, compared with ten the previous year. Fourteen involved more than seven days of lost working time and one was recorded as a serious near miss. The CNPA said investigations found no common pattern or trend, with the incidents occurring at different locations and in different circumstances.
The report also records two personal data breaches that were reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office during the year. One concerned the sharing of employee payslips and was closed with no further action, while the second remained under investigation by the ICO when the report was prepared. The Authority said all breaches and incidents were managed through its internal processes and that it continued to record lower-level incidents and near misses for organisational learning.
Other workforce indicators moved in a more favourable direction. Police officer attrition fell from 9% to 7%, while police staff attrition also stood at 7%. Police staff headcount increased from 357 to 382 and the number of staff leaving fell from 39 to 28. The CNC maintained its deployability target of at least 90% throughout the year, while more than 80% of personnel on its Initial Foundation Programme passed to become newly qualified Authorised Firearms Officers.
Chief Constable Simon Chesterman said, as quoted in a news update: “I am immensely proud of what we achieved in the past year. Officers and staff contributed to our successful delivery of the core mission, the protection of our sensitive civil nuclear sites and material.” He added: “We also demonstrated our ability to expand our protective services to new areas of critical national infrastructure, and to continue to support national policing needs.”
The Authority has approved a £194.5 million revenue budget for 2026-27 alongside £14.1 million in capital expenditure. The report identifies inflation, national pay negotiations and supply-chain costs as continuing pressures, while changes across the nuclear estate create a separate workforce challenge because recruiting, vetting and training new firearms officers involves substantial lead times. The CNC says it is developing retention measures as existing sites cease operations and personnel are increasingly required across new nuclear facilities and other areas of critical national infrastructure.
I’d be interested to know what is causing the workplace stress for this force? Article makes it just moving/closure of places?
Compared to their Home Office colleagues or fellow nationwide force the BTP, they don’t carry or investigate crimes, deal with Mental Health/medical/concern calls outs, constant watches, driving on extended Cat 1 calls (blues and tones) or face the public 24/7 with the threat of one out of context clip/phrase getting them the sack… whilst all the time being regarded as ‘the enemy’ by far left and far right…
I think I just don’t understand their mission or stress… their contracts clearly didn’t cover moving around, hopefully they can figure it out.
Hi Mike Have you actually done the Maths on these figures 54 out of 1500 is 0.34% and that’s an exceptionally low figures for any industry. You also have to take into account these folks are nearly all Fire Arms Trained / Armed and have to maintain a high level of fitness. Also FYI some of them work in counter terrorism / protest intelligence.
Most Nuclear sites are in fairly remote areas and widely separated for obvious reasons which means those staff are facing either relocation (family stress) to another part of the country or redundancy and both of those are pretty damn stressful in anyone’s life.
If Jonathon is reading this I’d love to know what the corresponding figures are in your industry for stress absence (I bet the decimal point moves to the right 😉).
Yep, well studied of Nurse stress are widespread so we know the baselines..
About 20% of nurses have diagnosable PTSD ( hit all criteria for diagnosis) this goes up to about 30% in high intensity areas ITU and Accident and emergency.
A massive 95% ( essentially all of them) suffer from 1 of the core symptoms of PTSD during their careers (such as intrusive thoughts, hyperarousal, or emotional numbing).
About 25% of front line nurses have all the signs and symptoms of clinical depression ( we are talking significant mental illness )
About 50-66% are suffering the signs of stress and anxiety..
During Covid that spiked to about 80% which essentially mean every single clinical nurses was sitting on a case of anxiety or depression…
Essentially your average nurse is a walking edge case.
If you consider we train 23,000 nurses a year and it takes 3 years and costs £67,000.. of those 23,000. 1200 will have burnt out handed in their registration within 5 years and 11,000 within the decade… that’s almost a 50% loss within a decade.
So why is that, are nurses special little flowers that are less mentally robust.. well considering your average nurse can and will watch you die horribly with a completely straight and calm face, then go and eat tea and toast in the canteen while chatting about what bob and Tina got up to last night. that’s a nope.
But mental illness, anxiety happen because of chronic stress response, not acute stress response.
The simple true is you cannot put people under life and death pressure every minute of their working day and every day year after year over cook the risk so they cannot manage the risk of death and harm.. and expect a person to be anything’s other than screwed up.. if your everyday is deciding which potentially dying person is waiting for care because you have to ration and then having to deal with the outcome of those all bad rationing choices, that’s not a good place to be especially when you add in the true horror, random verbal and physical assault.. when a shift looks like a dying child one moment..trying to keep an eye on a trauma call attempted murder by Van the next, then physically sitting on a drug addled person trying to kill anyone ( that’s always fun especially when you end up with 3 coppers on top of you the nutter underneath and a 4th threatening to use CS spray right next to your face) all the while constantly being whinged at for not being quicker by people with a cut finger and in your head trying to oversee the care of 50 casualties and think who’s most likely to die or suffer the most, when you know you’ve got potential life threatening conditions waiting 2 hours to see a Dr ( 2 Drs, 4 nurses and 30+ casualties ) the on call manager has told you to essentially fuck off and sort your own problems out..your body and mind screams just leave, your duty binds you and you know every minute is a life and death moment and if you drop a ball you will have caused the death of a person. all the while your 70 hours into a set of 12 hour night shifts and have not seen proper daylight for 6 days and it’s not special it’s just your standard Saturday night shift.. and you stumble home will fall into bed before the sun rises, wake in the dark and do it all again..
The human brain is very good at acute stress that we have perceived power over and is short and episodic ( we are designed to go out and hunt in the jungle, run away from the tiger then come home to safety and have a laugh about almost being eaten, slap our backs over killing the deer and feel good ) , we manage the deadly threat or massive acute stress and we get a reward ( that neuro chemical rush) . but we are not designed to have that tiger sit on our lap day in day out without the power to manage the threat.. chronic stress… essentially you keep putting chronic stress on a person ( give them constant no win choices with significant consequences. over work them, make the work not achievable, deprive them of sleep) they will suffer anxiety if you then load them with some nasty acute episodes.. you will at some point find their break point and give them a serious mental health condition because if we spend to long under significant chronic stress we cannot manage acute stress, generally that’s the difference between a bad an event you just manage and getting PTSD, how much chronic stress has been loaded on you before and just after… ( you can see one person die horribly.. but when it’s day after day ?) it’s why the stress free nurse will breeze through anything you can throw at them.. the nurse who is on hour 70 of a hard set of nights is at high risk of PTSD if something horrible happens.. (I freak out about fire doors being left propped open..sweats happen and I’m straight back to sucking black gunk out of the lungs of burnt to a crisp lady, with blistered and blackend skin falling off under my gloves..I was at the time on night seven that’s what did that one, as I’ve seen far worse, but that’s the one that makes me sweat and triggers anger and being there when I see propped open fire doors).
While I agree with most of what you said Mike, the threat of the next phrase getting them the sack exists. The biggest culprits are the new officers told to report anything that offends them.
For a public body these are pretty impressive figures, Policing is stressful and anyone who has ever worked in a business knows that the possibility of downsizing, relocation or redundancy sparks a surge in stress related absences. When you consider that, the overall increase in responsibilities into protecting Nationally important infrastructure and that they are armed it’s no great surprise really.
What is a surprise is they managed to operate below their allocated budget for the year, that’s a real bonus these days.
I do have to wonder if perhaps the time has come for the U.K to have a really big rethink about Policing and Security, we are facing multiple threats from internal and external sources but have a complete mishmash of organisations trying to deal with them.
I’d really like to hear from others on here what they think can or should be done ?
For me the answer is to have a 2 tier Policing System comprising of the following.
1st Tier of larger combined Regional Constabularies to replace the county based ones which reduces admin overheads and cuts down the County line issues.
The 2nd Tier is IMHO staring us in the face and that’s to set up an enlarged National Police Force by combining the existing ones we already have and pay for. So that’s the Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC), British Transport Police (BTP), Ministry of Defence Police (MOD Plod), Royal Military Police (RMP), Regional / Mets Counter Terrorist Units (CTU’s / CTC also known as SO15) and finally Special Branch.
I might even consider going one stage further and reorganise the other 2 emergency services into mirrors of the Tier 1 Regional Constabularies so they can share infrastructure and Admin functions.
I should add how I’d pay for it. We have 2 NATO agreed spending targets 3.5% for Direct Defence spending and another 1.5% of GDP which can include this as it’s about Society resilience, countering hybrid threats and securing National infrastructure.
Interesting.
In the 1st Tier, I believe some county forces had already amalgamated to reduce admin, HQ duplication costs along those lines, and specialist roles of county forces already merged into regional organisations.
And funnily enough, we already have a national capability in the NCA along those lines, but that lacks the uniformed and armed police roles of those you list and is organised crime orientated.
Not sure regards including the RMP, as they form part of the Field Army for the most part, with little national role with the exception of various specialist units with niche capabilities like 2 MI Bn and a few bits and pieces like DSCC, DSCU, SO Reg, SPCB, FIB, VWCU, CPU.
Which government department would you have them under, if any? As CNC is Dep of Energy, NCA is a stand alone agency, MoD for MDP, BTP the DOT, and so on. We don’t want the sort of turf wars that occurred when the Security Service took primacy from the Met SB regards CT intelligence, for example.
Would you widen this into a UK version of the Department of National Security? So you could throw in some Cabinet Office functions as well like the CCS and NSS, as well as the MDP, CNC, CTC. Maybe if a volunteer Civil Defence Corps was ever created as well, ranging from key point defence to floods, wildfires, all sorts, they could be added as a county by county reserve.
Hi M8, I thought this idea would interest you, and the reasons I included the RMP are twofold.
Firstly the vast bulk of the RMP is based here in the U.K during peacetime so are available for use as added mass.
Secondly in Wartime they can still deploy with the Field Army just like they would do now.
It’s more about forming a single cohesive National, structured, armed, trained and deployable security force that has the mass to react to National Emergencies but also protect our Vital National Infrastructure.
As for which dept is in charge it could be a New Unified Dept (call it anything other than Homeland Security ugh !) or the Home office. I might also add in is a 2nd tier combining Border Force, HMRC, Coast guard and immigration.
The other possibility is to allow the 1st Tier to have a reservist force of its own for home defence purposes only, there are a lot of ex service personnel and Police who may well like the idea of bossing their pensions and serving but knowing they will not go overseas in time of war. Tgat could well appeal to ex service personnel who live near their former bases and would be the obvious folk to guard them !
Hi mate.
Thanks for clarifying, that does make perfect sence regards the RMP.
Hi M8. Was it you that posted something about the lack of actual armed military or Police who could be used if we had a major crisis or am I way off.
Reason I ask is if you total up all 4 of those Police forces it’s about 9,000 and when you add on about 6,000 deployable Police Fire Arms Trained officers it’s not a small number. As you know ORBATS and bids in Green isn’t my field but how does that compare to the number of Army Infantry ?
Hi mate.
Twas not I.
Though I have discussed MDP allocations as I track locations with an armed guard as well, so maybe it was that?
I might be wrong, but I think the regular Infantry remains under 20k, I recall around 19k.
The army design is that the infantry constitutes 25% of army strength. So it would indeed be about 18,250 at the moment.
The NCA does carry out arrests and carries guns on occasions, although local police units are often involved as well.
HMG announced back in January or February that the NCA is going to be expanded in size and role and renamed the National Police Service and that it would focus on national and international organised crime. I can’t remember if that include corruption and terrorism, which I think it should as there are close links between them. The local forces would be responsible for localised crime. That is all that was announced at the time that I can remember but clearly there will be a lot of debate of roles, lines of responsibility and budgets so it is probably not unsurprising that the announcement that I remember was a bit thin on detail.
Personally I prefer the National Crime Agency as a name as police has a bobbies on the beat connotation which would not apply to the new service which will likely still remain largely out of sight for most of us as it will be chasing serious heads of gang types of people which is largely an investigative role. So why they don’t just keep the name the same and build on the reputation that has been slowly built up over the last 10+ years I don’t know? I for one have noticed that the NCA have been showing up on our TV screens more over the last few years and I am pretty sure I have seen some of the carrying fire arms on a couple of TV shoots (NCA on the back of their vests).
Cheers CR
Agreed, I’d keep NCA just as is.
HMG, MoD, they’re all obsessed with cosmetics and branding renaming stuff left right and centre with no real change in day to day reality and capability.
I agree. The NCA is really part of national security and prefer to keep away from the police. One bent copper could ruin an entire investigation. Organised international crime gangs are a huge threat and have been known to intimidate serving police officers and their families. I think adding them to the joint intelligence services is not required but they are nearer that end of the spectrum.
Very much so, Richard.
Like the CTU/CTIU’s, their locations bar a few are not openly publicised, very low key.
But not at MI5/MI6/GCHQ levels either, so they are somewhat in the middle, a bit like the ROCU’s – Regional Organised Crime Units, which are local police and not NCA.
While I agree that stress levels can increase depending on personal circumstances, the excuse that they are “all fully armed” means fuck all! Localised stress is nothing to do with people being fully firearms trained, nothing whatsoever. It’s a job role, one they accepted, one that are physiologically assessed and trained for! In fact the CNC do a damn sight less than your average 6 week trained AFO in your local plod. However I’m sure I will be chastised for having a real time opinion, as seems the way nowadays 👍
Not disagreeing with you, I’m just trying to put these figures in context as why they may have gone up. But you just said fully supports what I am trying to point out. For any modern organisation these “stress” figures are very, very low.
In fact in some ways announcing them may be a bit of an own goal !
Agreed mate, stress is real and AFOs etc need to be focused, but I do think many people are less robust than previous, cheers 👍
Airborne and I have discussed this before. For peace keeping operations you need law enforcement trained thinking soldiers/air/naval.
Therefore creating a Carabinieri of Armed Forces Police combining with CNC, BTP, ModPlod etc would create an armed response force nationwide that could also deploy internationally and develop their skill set into working with the NCA detection/intelligence roles and career progression, given the level of fire arms training that MP undertake at Longmoor for CP duties, the ‘Ranger’ Bns are OK, but surely a Carabinieri style force would be much better suited releasing infantry bods back to being infantry.
May I just say as a 30 year regular home office force officer I am pleased with the intelligence shown in these commentaries. Some thoughtful stuff and good ideas about stress and re-organisation as well as excellent knowledge about roles etc. I have my own ideas about amalgamations but to me they do make sense. I have no military service though I have worked with many ex-military in the job and have watched with dismay the changes government has wrought on both police and military. It would have been nice had they had half the knowledge on this forum.
My own tuppence (as it was my PhD specialist area) is how often the PSNI are absent from these conversations. There is an abundance of ex-military and firearms specialist knowledge over there which I think should be in the conversation.