1 year ago
1210
In a show of defiance, Whicham Parish Council last week voted unanimously to withdraw from the South Copeland GDF Community Partnership, joining Millom Town Council in saying no to further collaboration with plans to bring a nuclear waste dump to Haverigg and Millom.
Meanwhile at Millom Without Parish Council, Chair Councillor Carl Carrington has resigned as the Council’s representative, with the Council resolving in July that Parish Councillors should take it in turns to attend future Community Partnership meetings on a ‘rotational basis’.
Millom Town Council, Whicham Parish Council and Millom Without Parish Council, along with the Friends of the Lake District and Sustainable Duddon, have also submitted a statement ‘rebutting the NWS report on the Partnership’. This refers to the report published following the external review conducted by the former Chair of the now defunct Allerdale GDF Community Partnership, in which the South Copeland GDF Community Partnership was described as ‘dysfunctional’.
Whicham Parish Council’s decision to withdraw from the community partnership does not derail the process. Unlike Cumberland Council, neither Whicham nor Millom are deemed to be Relevant Principal Local Authorities and so cannot exercise the Right to Withdraw.
But the decisions of Millom and Whicham to withdraw, that of Millom Without to cease to have a permanent representative, and the collective condemnatory response to the external review all represent clear signals that local elected representatives no longer wish to be associated with a discredited project.
Whicham Councillors have also previously condemned the selection of an area surrounding His Majesty’s Prison Haverigg as an Area of Focus. This area, designated West of Haverigg, will be subjected to further intensive investigations by Nuclear Waste Services to determine its ‘suitability’ as a potential surface site to receive future nuclear waste shipments from Sellafield.
Local people in the neighbouring Bankhead Estate and Kirksanton were angry that they would see a nuclear waste dump on their doorstep. They formed the South-West Lakes – Anti GDF Community Group to actively lobby their Councillors to withdraw their support from the process and lift the threat of a Geological Disposal Facility from the West of Haverigg site.
Residents are right to be concerned; for any GDF would be massively detrimental to the quality of their lives for decades. This is made plain in the latest iteration of the government’s guidance, Managing Radioactive Substances and Nuclear Decommissioning: UK policy framework, issued in April 2024.
Section 7 on Page 92 reads:
‘The UK Government expects that it will take around 10 years to construct the first vaults within a facility. Alongside construction, there are likely to be continued underground investigations and testing of the geology to make sure that a GDF meets the necessary high standards of safety, security and environmental protection. Once the first vaults have been built, construction of the facility and the disposal of the waste will continue in parallel; with new tunnels and vaults being built as existing tunnels and vaults are filled.’
Construction then will not be completed in the first decade as has previously been intimated in public meetings by NWS officials, but rather it may take almost the whole entirety of the project to complete. This then means that construction work, alongside waste disposal operations and backfilling, will be hugely disruptive to the functioning of any host community for perhaps up to 100 years. And it is not even certain the whole facility could be built out as the guidance suggests that this is dependant upon ‘continued underground investigations and testing’ being satisfactory.
Last week, the South Copeland GDF Community Partnership with a new interim Chair Councillor Andy Pratt, held its first public meeting since November 2024 when it went into prolonged hibernation pending the completion of the external review.
Sadly, at that meeting, the Community Partnership failed to cover itself in any glory as previous pre-hiatus democratic meeting practices were rolled back.
Tim Kendall from the South-West Lakes – Anti GDF Community Group has reported that the meeting failed to supply agendas and minutes to any of the 15 members of the public in attendance, and furthermore more seriously failed to provide the public with any opportunity to speak as had been past practice. This included denying Tim the opportunity the chance to read into the record a statement.
The NFLAs would like to provide Tim with a platform to do so. Here is his statement:
‘Statement from the South-West Lakes anti GDF group
Firstly, we would like to state the lack of apology to our community following the independent review of the partnership up to November 2024 is indicative of the contempt Nuclear Waste Services have had towards our community.
The scathing review describing the partnership as dysfunctional and how it failed us.
It came as no surprise that the review revealed the inadequacies only you couldn’t see and the success of NWS manipulation of the partnership was evidenced by the continuation of the partnership without your input and the continued partnership membership of those who led that dysfunctional group and the blame they laid upon you. Almost 3 1/2 years without a solitary impact reaching the community. Not one minuted item generated by the RPLA representative at Cumberland Council or through local council channels and a Chair who took pride in stating negative impacts being discussed in the community had not come from the partnership.
A real NWS “success”.
What is real, is where our community is now. Both Whicham Council and Millom Council rejecting the NWS area of focus. Whicham outright, following their total electorate, independent survey demonstrating a huge majority against the development and Millom stating the Area is not beneficial for the residents of Bank Head Haverigg, following a similar huge majority of a survey of Bank Head and surrounding area residents. A unanimous vote by both councils, including the partnership Relevant Principal Local Authority (RPLA) Cumberland Council representative, Councillor Bob Kelly who also stated that the process has caused “Unnecessary suffering both financially and psychologically” This along with his statement that he “Can’t imagine any community wanting to house the facility” extraordinary in what is supposedly a consent-based process.
You will all be aware of Simon Hughes, the NWS Siting and Communities Director’s statement of which he has reiterated its validity. It states:
“The policy surrounding our search for a safe and suitable location for a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) in the UK is emphatic. It requires the express consent of the people who would be living alongside a GDF, and gives them influence over the pace at which discussions progress.
What happens from now onwards will be led by local people, and we’ll follow wherever the dialogue take us”.
It is obvious that consent has not been given, and the dialogue is taking you to a place where “those living alongside” want the process to stop to allow normality back to their lives.
Both Cumberland Council and NWS are aware of the “suffering” inflicted on our community with your failure in community engagement contributory and have failed with assistance.
Colin Cox Director of Public Health, Customer and Community Wellbeing has admitted the GDF is not included in the Health and Wellbeing Strategy of Cumberland Council, despite the obvious foreseeable impacts.
Is the suffering below your individual acceptable thresholds?
Are you happy to allow the continued destruction of the lifestyle and livelihoods of those “living alongside” particularly at Bank Head and Kirksanton, those who NWS state must give “express consent” by facilitating this process?
Remember this is happening now.
Please look at both the local councils’ democratic rejection and the Cumberland Council representatives’ rejection of the Area of Focus, the Cumberland Council representatives’ statements regarding the “unnecessary suffering both financially and psychologically” and that he “Can’t imagine any community wanting to house the facility” and ask yourself if maybe the time is right to follow Lincolnshire.
For these reasons we are asking formally for the partnership to make representation to the RPLA to invoke the right to withdraw. Do not be party to the enabling of “unnecessary suffering” to our community that this unjust process is causing.’
Providing the papers to public attendees and allocating time on the agenda for the public to speak is standard practice in local government and something Councillor Pratt with his long experience will be familiar with.
On their establishment, the NFLAs wrote to all the new Community Partnerships calling upon them to make their meetings public, ensure that members of the public attending were fully engaged in the business of meetings, and make the papers available promptly online and at the meeting. Sadly practice at South Copeland appears to have gone backwards.
Tim described his experience of the conduct of the most recent meeting as:
‘Disgraceful and an insult to our community.’
Ends://..For more information please email NFLA Secretary Richard Outram at richard.outram@manchester.gov.uk
