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Nuclear Waste Services (the developers) have started desk-based site evaluations for both South and Mid Copeland.

We are told the studies will take two to three years to complete and “will look at a range of topics which have taken into consideration community feedback gathered since the formation of the Community Partnership.”

A quote from the Siting Director tells us, “The work we’ve now started will address the most common topics to have emerged from our discussions with local people. It will begin to give us a much better understanding of the suitability of the area and enable us to consider how different elements of a GDF could be delivered in Copeland.”

But they have clearly chosen to ignore many of the concerns raised during discussions with local people in particular the negative effects on the local communities whilst continuing to emphasise the so-called positives: “A GDF is a multi-billion-pound infrastructure project, which could bring significant economic opportunities and thousands of jobs to the area which eventually hosts it.”

The chair of the Community Partnership, Ged McGrath (re-elected for a second year) welcomes the news “as the information provided will help to answer many of the questions raised by members of the public and aid understanding as to whether South Copeland could be a suitable location to host a GDF. We will keep the community updated with the latest information as and when the findings emerge.” Will they?

A further ‘News’ item shares an interview with the Siting Manager and identifies ten of their priorities, the top one being to collate previous information on the geology of the search area (one would have thought they would have done this before spending thousands on the seismic surveys). The studies will also include “Identifying the deep borehole drilling techniques and investigations which could be used in the local area.” (Let’s hope they take into account the radioactive mud).

Another priority (although near the bottom of the list) is to “understand potential local land requirements to support early engagement and raising awareness of future GDF investigations.” It is not rocket science to realise that the only viable position for the site would be in Haverigg, although this has now been complicated because Drigg has been added to our search area.

Here are links to a lecture by Dr Helen Wallace called Rock Solid which is about deep geological disposal of nuclear waste. They are from 2012 but much of what she says is relevant now.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Part Seven

Part Eight

Part Nine

On the welcome page of their latest newsletter (February 2023) the chair of the Community Partnership tells us “This discussion is happening in communities across England” then goes on to say four Community Partnerships have been formed in four different areas. That is hardly across England especially as three of these are in Cumbria.

He tells us it is their “job to ensure a fair process, the voices of local people are heard, ask questions and raise concerns with the GDF developer, who we will hold to account. We need to be open to both the benefits and impacts of a GDF and this needs exploration with independent help as more details become clear over time.” Do you think the more they say this the more likely we are to believe that they mean it?

Our question is: “When do you intend to look at the impacts of a GDF?” “Will this happen once you have finished bribing everyone?” Stop giving the impression that you are going to answer our concerns when it seems pretty clear you have no intention of doing this otherwise why have you not done so by now?

The newsletter tells us many countries are moving forward with plans for GDFs and cites Sweden as having identified a site which is supported by two communities. Well, last night there was an international webinar at which a representative of the opposition in Sweden gave an overview of the situation there. It is quite clear from his comments that the communities in Sweden are far from supportive and have raised many similar issues we have identified and, like us, they have not been given any answers.

Advertising is used in general to sway our thinking and persuade us to accept a certain product – and it works otherwise why do companies spend a fortune on advertising campaigns?

In this case Nuclear Waste Services are using advertising to persuade us to believe the GDF is a good thing for our area – and there are only positives.

Their colouring book aimed at children is a blatant example of manipulating children. Is this acceptable?

The booklet is generic and aimed at anyone of the four potential host areas. However, they are now getting personal and using local people, often those in responsible positions, to do their advertising for them.

It is very clever: government provide the money so that the developers, i.e. Nuclear Waste Services, can make grants available to areas considering hosting a GDF. Successful organisations are then thankful for their awards and agree to having photographs taken and videos made showing their gratitude (and publicising their services). Thus we are brainwashed into believing South Copeland GDF Community Partnership (and therefore the GDF developers) are a benevolent organisation with our best interests at heart.

The underlying (and manipulative) message of this is that the GDF is good. It is supportive and friendly. Look how the funding is helping our community! Look how organisations are benefitting from their generosity.

Their latest propaganda photograph shows the mayor and deputy mayor of Millom town, along with the Baptist minister and a member of her congregation showing how thankful they are for the grant. If you scroll down you will find videos of young people and children benefitting from the funding.

If we carry on at this rate most of the organisations and services in Millom and surrounding villages will receive funding from the GDF Community Partnership and be very grateful to them for that funding. And we will have more photographs and videos that show our gratitude for this amazingly generous Community Partnership. And, wait for it, it seems likely their latest newsletter will be falling through our letter boxes in the coming week so that those who are not on the internet can have the benefit of reading and seeing how the town is benefitting from GDF funding.

So the GDF is firmly being placed in our minds as a benevolent ‘thing’ that supports the community, is kind and caring. And look at all these people, including our own town council, who support it.

If the siting of a GDF in our area comes to the vote (maybe in ten years) just who would dare oppose it? Look at how the town has benefitted and will continue to benefit from it.

It doesn’t matter that the Community Partnership is not telling us about all the possible negative affects it is likely to have on our town and surrounding area. It doesn’t matter that we are being manipulated by government and big business. As long as we continue to get funding…

As a result of government reorganisation Drigg and Carlton with Irton and Stanton will now join the South Copeland Search Area for a GDF (nuclear dump. South Copeland Search Area boundary to change due to Local Government Reorganisation – South Copeland GDF Community Partnership (workinginpartnership.org.uk)

A petition has been set up on Change.org to try to get Millom Town Council to follow the lead of Whicham Parish Council and conduct a survey of its constituents to find out if they are against the GDF, in favour of it or undecided. So far, residents have had no say whatsoever in the process. Here is a link to the petition.

According to government, town and parish councils are the first level of local government. They provide communities with a democratic voice and a structure for taking community action; they are meant to represent community views.

Millom Town Council should have 15 councillors but there are three vacant posts at the moment. Of the current 12 councillors only four were elected (unopposed) in the last elections of 2019 – they were elected unopposed because not enough people stood for there to be an election; the other eight have been co-opted without the constituents having any say, this is because eight councillors have resigned during this period.  So unless we are told something different (both Millom Town Council and Copeland Borough Council have been contacted for information) there should be an election for all 15 Millom town councillors this coming May.

We do not want a GDF to be sited in our area; it would appear that this is the view of over 60% of the community (as shown in the two surveys – one conducted by millom.org., the other baseline survey commissioned by the Community Partnership.  Whilst both were small surveys nevertheless it seems likely the results reflect the views of the majority).

The position of the current Millom Town Council is said to be neutral regarding the GDF however their actions speak louder than their words as they are represented on the South Copeland GDF Community Partnership.  The Community Partnership (CP) are meant to listen to the views of the community and make information about the GDF available to the community. Not only do the CP not listen to the views of the community (who appear to be opposed to a GDF being sited here) but they only promote one view about the GDF, that of the developer and do not address the concerns of the community by obtaining independent information and letting the community know about this.  So, in effect, Millom Town Council are actually promoting the possibility of a GDF being sited in our area against the wishes of the majority.

It would seem Millom Town Council agreed to join the Community Partnership in order to access the £1 million funding available because this is what they were told they had to do by the chair of the Partnership. Well, we discovered that this is not the case: they do NOT have to be a member of the CP to apply for funding!  But they intend to continue to be a member as stated in their response to a request that they consider withdrawing as a result of the baseline survey:

In answer to your questions, Millom Town Council (MTC) will, for the foreseeable future, continue with its neutral stance on the possible siting of a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) off the coast of South Copeland as ultimately should a suitable site be identified, the community will make the final decision.

We will also not be withdrawing from the South Copeland GDF Community Partnership as this is a major infrastructure project that aims to protect people and the environment for generations to come. Withdrawing from the partnership serves no purpose, as the process does not require MTC to be around the table to continue. It is our collective responsibility as a council to ensure that process is transparent, open and robust to ensure our community has all the information required to make an informed decision should the process develop to that stage.

As a Council, we will continue to monitor the views of the community and ensure that they are fed into the discussions of this process over the coming years as more information becomes available.

How on earth is making our area Britain’s main nuclear dump “a major infrastructure project that aims to protect people and the environment for generations to come?”   As already stated, the CP does not (nor does Millom Town Council) provide the community with all the information required to make an informed choice: they are only giving one side and are not addressing the concerns of the community.

It is in our power to change this: we can put forward candidates for the forthcoming election who stand on an anti-GDF ticket. Once elected the new council can conduct a poll to ascertain the views of the community with regard to the GDF (which the current Town Council will not do).  It could then pull out of the Community Partnership and gather information about the concerns residents have raised about the GDF, making this information public.

The new council could also survey residents about their needs and wants and produce a Town Plan based on the views of residents (most town and parish councils have one but not Millom).

The people of this town deserve better; they deserve proper representation, their opinions should count.

Are you willing to stand up and be counted??????

A Complaint has been sent to the Chief Constable of Cumbria Constabulary about a Lead Member of Copeland Borough Council.

Over 20 Copeland residents (along with other signatories) have signed a letter of complaint to Chief Constable Michelle Skeer about the Portfolio Holder for Nuclear, and Lead Member of the Council Executive. Councillor David Moore has failed to declare financial interests at Copeland Borough Council Meetings.

This failure to declare financial interests came to light at an Executive meeting in July. A petition from tens of thousands of members of the public condemning seismic testing of the subsea area for a Geological Disposal Facility off the Copeland coast, was presented to the Executive of Copeland Borough Council.

The letter states “It would be completely in the interests of the civil nuclear industry to disparage opponents of the project and Councillor Moore was quick to publicly dismiss petitioners as out-of-borough and ‘odd people’ but completely failed to declare at the meeting that he receives payment from that same industry for his services.” Nuclear Waste Services who commissioned the seismic testing is a division of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-62397013

The letter goes on to say that: “Under the Localism Act of 2011, it is a criminal offence if, without a reasonable excuse, an elected member (Councillor) fails to tell their Council’s monitoring officer about their disclosable pecuniary interests, either for inclusion in the register held by that officer or at any meeting where a matter relating to those interests will be discussed or on any matter related to those interests where that elected member is acting alone (for example, where that elected member is also a portfolio holder with devolved responsibilities).

The complaint concludes that:

“In our view, Councillor David Moore has committed numerous offences under the Localism Act of 2011 in:

• Failing to declare disclosable pecuniary interests
• Acting alone on Council business where he has disclosable pecuniary interests
• Participating in Council business where he has disclosable pecuniary interests
• And he also acted in complete contravention to his oath of office to always conduct himself in accordance with the Seven Nolan Principles of Public Office.” And calls upon the “Chief Constable to take prompt and effective action on the contents of this letter.”

The Nuclear Free Local Authorities have sent a second letter to each the four Community Partnerships responsible for taking forward proposals for a nuclear waste dump to seek assurances that opponents of the plan will have a chance to take up membership.

The Community Partnerships in Allerdale, Mid-Copeland, South-Copeland, all in West Cumbria, and in Theddlethorpe, in East Lincolnshire, are each pursuing the possibility of hosting Britain’s many tons of highlevel radioactive waste, produced from Britain’s civil nuclear and military nuclear programmes, in an undersea Geological Disposal Facility.

The waste will be radioactive and hazardous for well over 100,000 years and the British Government wants to dispose of this in a dump extending out under either the Irish or North Sea. Plans are at an early stage and public opposition is growing.

In his letter, NFLA Chair, Councillor David Blackburn, asks the remaining Community Partnerships to follow the lead shown by Theddlethorpe in being prepared to accept new members who are opposed to the GDF, should they choose to apply for membership.
The Chair of the Theddlethorpe Community Partnership, Mr Jon Collins, has publicly stated that his wishes to see membership reflect a range of views ‘which means recruiting members who are sceptical, or even, at this stage, against the proposed GDF’.

Councillor Blackburn said: “The NFLA believes that the membership of each of the community partnerships must reflect both the demographic and the range of views of those communities.

“Until now most members have been elected Councillors or in some instances connected to the nuclear industry through employment or business interests”.

“We need more independent voices from all walks of life, particularly young people as decisions over a GDF will take place over more than a next decade, and this should include members of the community opposed to the plans, if they want to participate”.

Councillor Blackburn also wants to see newly appointed members to the Community Partnership able to have their say in revising the key documents that determine how the Community Partnership works and
what is expected of them.

He added: “It seems completely unfair to expect new members to the Community Partnership to adhere to a collective Community Partnership Agreement and a personal Code of Conduct that were drawn up without their input. I therefore hope that periodic reviews can be built into the process so they can have their say in
the future as part of the consent-based approach Nuclear Waste Services say they have adopted”.

In his statement about Community Partnerships dated 22nd November Councillor Moore, Copeland Borough Council says:

“What we provide in the Community Partnership is a dispassionate, measured consideration of the facts so we can give our community credible evidence and real information. We want you to be fully informed about what is going on. This is a long-term process, and we are only at the very start of it. The Community Partnerships are doing what they can to help people get the information they need about what hosting a GDF would mean – the positive impacts and the negative.”

I contacted South Copeland GDF Community Partnership to ask when is Councillor Moore (Community Partnerships) going to tell the community what the negative impacts of hosting a GDF are?

Their response was to direct me to two government documents from 2019, in particular section 5 Impacts from National Policy Statement for Geological Disposal Infrastructure.

WOW, this is what helping people to get the negative impacts of hosting a GDF is?

The response also said: “We are at a very early stage of the siting process and the maturity of the GDF design reflects this, so at this point we are really only talking about generic impacts (available via the NPS above). As we progress our site evaluation work, we will engage via the Community Partnership to understand the community’s views and concerns about more localised impacts.”

Well, they have engaged with the community in South Copeland via a Baseline Survey. In his statement in response to the findings, Councillor McGrath, chair of the South Copeland GDF Community Partnership, said, “We are listening to everyone’s views, and we will continue to do so…” If you are listening to everyone’s views why are you continuing to look at siting a GDF in the Millom/Haverigg/Kirksanton area when the survey clearly shows the majority of the community here do not want it?

How’s about letting the community know what the generic negative impacts are of hosting a GDF?