ONR has been praised by a government organisation for ensuring it has the right capability and capacity to meet its regulatory demands.
The Nuclear Skills Strategy Group (NSSG) – an employer led group bringing together employers, government, regulators and trade unions to address the sector’s skills challenge – has removed the regulatory capacity risk placed on ONR in 2016 from their register, recognising our ongoing commitment to developing our staff and expanding our recruitment pipelines.
When the risk was established, our work to develop a range of innovative approaches was already underway as we recognised that it was essential to have the right people in place with the right mix of skills and experience to meet our future regulatory challenges. Our approaches included creating new recruitment ‘talent pipelines’ to address our skills requirements in key areas, setting up our own graduate programme, joining the degree apprentice programme and creating a regulatory capability development initiative – all supported by the ONR Academy, a physical and virtual space to train staff, which launched in March 2018.
John Male, Head of ONR’s Academy, said: ““We are delighted that our innovative approaches are working and we are especially pleased that this has been acknowledged by NSSG. However, we are not complacent and we welcome the continuous assessment by the NSSG to ensure we can meet the regulatory demands of the nuclear sector.”
Dr Fiona Rayment OBE, Chair of the NSSG, said: “The NSSG, of which ONR is a key member, is working collaboratively to ensure our talent pipeline is robust, with a Strategy and Plan in place to achieve this. We are delighted that the ONR’s own skills strategy is aligned with this approach. The ONR has worked hard to develop a progressive approach to recruitment and training, with a focus on building expert regulatory capability as well as diversity, in what is an exceptionally challenging and critical field for our sector.
“The ONR Academy is a beacon of best practice in helping our sector with the challenges we face, including the requirement to have a first class regulator. This outstanding approach means that regulatory capacity is no longer a risk and of course sees the further development of exceptional technical and scientific talent across the ONR.”