Public servants working in Britain's nuclear industry are being paid millions of pounds of taxpayer-funded bonuses every year, The Times has learnt.

The finding, which emerged from the response to an inquiry under the Freedom of Information Act, has prompted fresh accusations of government waste as the Chancellor prepares the most austere Budget in decades today.

The response from the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), the agency responsible for the clean-up of Britain's nuclear sites, shows that the organisation paid nearly £3.8 million in bonuses to its 315 staff last year.

The average bonus was £11,954, with some regular, non-director level staff receiving £36,917 - up to 40 per cent of their salary. NDA directors received bonuses as high as £85,000.

The figures also show that every one of the NDA's regular workforce received a bonus last year, as they did in 2007. The payments were made on top of the regular salary payments, which totalled £19.5 million in 2008.

Susie Squire, campaign manager of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: “We don't think anyone in the Civil Service, which is already bloated, should be receiving bonuses. It's highly inappropriate, particularly in the current climate with so many ordinary workers struggling to make ends meet.”

Since its formation in 2005 the NDA, whose clean-up activities at 19 nuclear sites including Sellafield absorb half of the Department of Energy and Climate Change's £3 billion budget, has struggled to recruit and retain staff.

The West Cumbria-based organisation, which is auctioning three sites earmarked for the construction of new reactors, has been without a permanent chief executive for nine months since the departure of Sir Ian Roxburgh last July.

The NDA insists that its bonus policy is strictly based on performance, with awards calculated according to a series of personal and corporate objectives set out in a tailored employee plan.

However one well-placed source claimed that this was simply a formality.

“Most staff receive their entire bonus every year. Bonuses are not judged on day-to-day performance - a member of staff could do very little each day and still receive a bonus.”

The NDA denied a claim that one senior member of staff had an objective that included a requirement to maintain a “clear-desk” policy.

Although 58 per cent of its £2.6 billion budget came from taxpayers last year, the NDA is technically a “non-departmental public body”, a type of quango, rather than a regular arm of the Civil Service. This arm's-length relationship precludes it from the Civil Service Code, which imposes pay and other restrictions on regular government departments.

The NDA spokesman dismissed the suggestion that the bonus payments were a waste of money, saying that the organisation had achieved £450 million of savings and needed a bonus policy to attract and retain high-

quality staff from the private sector familiar with the management of nuclear decommissioning contracts.

The Times has also learnt that NDA staff had also been offered private medical insurance as part of their employment contracts. However, that perk was withdrawn last month.

The bulk of the NDA's budget is used to pay subcontractor firms, which employed 18,467 staff on its sites last year. Its budget for the three years to 2011 is £8.5 billion.

The clean-up of nuclear facilities has been paid for with a mix of funds. The NDA's commercial income, the bulk of which comes from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel at Sellafield plus the sale of electricity from the NDA's two remaining operational power stations at Wylfa and Oldbury, has in recent years fallen short of expectations.

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