WITHDRAWAL OF MILLOM TOWN COUNCIL FROM SOUTH COPELAND GDF COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIP
In their minutes of November 2024 MTC said they had withdrawn from the South Copeland GDF Community Partnership and stated:
“MTC has a responsibility to over 7300 residents in Millom & Haverigg to ensure that they are kept informed on the progress of the project and are educated to the potential risks and economic benefits that hosting a GDF could bring to the town. However Public engagement in Millom & Haverigg is currently non existent.”
QUESTION ASKED AT MTC COUNCIL MEETING JANUARY 29TH 2025
On the basis of this I attended their next meeting which was not until January 2025, I reminded the councillors of an excellent forum held in September 2023 organised by the South Copeland GDF Community Partnership which identified potential positives and negatives of the GDF being sited here. I handed out copies of the potential negative effects identified by many local participants at the event.
I told the Council we had been promised an Impacts Report that would respond to the concerns. This has never happened. In fact, residents have heard nothing about the potential negative effects from NWS nor Millom Town Council – EVER!
I noted, Councillor Faulkner stated in their November minutes:
“MTC has a responsibility to over 7300 residents in Millom & Haverigg to ensure that they are kept informed on the progress of the project and are educated to the potential risks [I will just repeat that, educated to the potential risks] and economic benefits that hosting a GDF could bring to the town. ….”
I then posed the following question:
How can MTC ensure the potential risks – as identified by the public in September 2023 – will be addressed?”
The response was not to answer my question but to blame the Community Partnership for the lack of progress. During the brief discussion which followed, I responded to one of the questions from a councillor about Nuclear Waste Services, saying that you cannot trust what they say, that they tell lies. The councillor asked me for an example. I could not reply (as there are too many). Instead, I sent the following email, dated 30th January 2025 and asked the clerk to distribute it to each councillor.
FIRST EMAIL 30TH JANUARY TO MTC
At the last meeting of MTC I asked the Council how they would get NWS to respond to the grave concerns expressed by members of the public from Haverigg and Millom at the CP forum of Sep 2023, given that the CP had not managed this in their three years of existence.
The response was not to answer the question but to blame the CP for the lack of progress.
NWS have been asked the same questions identified at the Forum over the past three years by various individuals. Their response has been to say they cannot answer them because at that time there was no area of focus.
That area of focus was identified in 2020 and made public in the Initial Evaluation Report – see point 40 on South Copeland Against the GDF website https://southcopelandagainstgdf.org.uk This has now been confirmed.
As part of explaining my question I said NWS had lied about many things, to which one of the councillors asked how had they lied? Well, there are nine lies/misinformation identified on https://southcopelandagainstgdf.org.uk and now that NWS have confirmed what they have known all along, that the site near Haverigg is the focus area, that is lie number ten!
So, perhaps Millom Town Council, as a whole, would like to consider how they are going to ensure the people they are responsible for in Haverigg and Millom are made aware of the serious potential negative effects of hosting a GDF here?
Because in order to make an informed decision, should it ever come to a vote, the community need to be aware of both the potential negatives as well as the positives.”
MTC RESPONSE, 7TH FEBRUARY 2025
The town clerk responded with the following email, dated 7th February 2025:
“In response to your email which has been circulated to all councillors please see below: Millom Town Council (MTC) does not run the GDF programme and has no responsibility for it, any questions you have regarding the work of the Community Partnership or NWS should be directed to them to answer. What MTC will do going forward is to help disseminate information supplied to us from NWS and where appropriate address the misinformation being disseminated by individuals via social media with factual information. MTC are fully aware that misinformation continues to be circulated regarding prison closure. We take a dim view of anyone using social media platforms who supports deliberate, frenzied, misconstrued scenarios without substantial evidence.
I will therefore be writing to the Minister of State for Prisons for confirmation that HMP Haverigg is not at risk of closure due to the GDF programme. Kind regards”
DID COUNCILLORS DISCUSS MY EMAIL OF 30TH JANUARY? DID THEY AGREE THE RESPONSE OF 7TH FEBRUARY?
It would appear the councillors did not agree to this email (I checked with one of them) which begs the question whether they even got my previous email of 30th January or whether they discussed it (unlikely as there has not been a meeting). So, who wrote the email?
Here is the draft minute concerning my question from the January Council meeting, mine is the second paragraph:
This bears no resemblance – or very little – about what I said or my question, or their response.
The Next meeting of MTC is on Wednesday, 26th February. There is nothing on the agenda relating to my email or the question I posed. The meeting should ratify the draft minutes of the meeting held in January.
Where the hell do you go from here??????????????????