In March 2017 the UK's Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) introduced the [ecurity Assessment Principles for the Civil Nuclear Industry (SyAPs). This framework for regulating the UK's civil nuclear industry was a significant departure from previous national and international regulatory approaches which focused on a prescriptive approach to regulation, whereas SyAPs is an outcomes-focused regulation.

A prescriptive approach essentially provides a checklist that the legally responsible duty holders need to meet. The key difference between a prescriptive approach and an outcomes-focused approach is that there is no checklist in an outcomes-focused approach, instead duty holders need to demonstrate that the evidence they have provided meets the outcomes specific by SyAPs. The advantage of this approach to regulation is that it provides scope for flexibility and innovation in how duty holders satisfy ONR. However, it introduces challenges for both the duty holder to satisfy the regulator and regulator in terms of the difficulty evaluate the responses provided by duty holders.

When SyAPs was introduced the ONR promised an independent review in order to gauge the efficacy of this new approach to regulating the security of the civil nuclear sector. This project acted as the independent review, which called for evidence from ONR, duty holders, and international organisations, to evaluate SyAPs.

A confidential report was produced and provided to ONR with recommendations from the independent review.