The UK and France have signed an agreement to increase nuclear cooperation, including on new nuclear construction projects and reducing reliance on civil nuclear goods from Russia.

The agreement also establishes a working group on nuclear innovation and safety as both countries seek to deploy large-scale and small modular reactors to achieve greater energy security by moving away from fossil fuels.

The UK government said the agreement was signed by energy security secretary Grant Shapps and France’s energy minister Agnes Pannier Runacher. It sees the UK and France commit to further cooperation on civil nuclear, to capitalise on both countries ambitions to “significantly grow” their nuclear sectors.

The UK and France have a decades-old partnership on nuclear power. French state power company EDF is leading the development of two EPR nuclear plants at Hinkley Point C in Somerset, and following a £700m (€852m) investment announced by Grant Shapps last November, the UK government is a co-shareholder in the proposed Sizewell C project in Suffolk with EDF. This investment represented the first state-backing of a nuclear project in Britain in over 30 years.