nuclear-news

UK government struggles to get community consent for nuclear waste dumping

GDF Watch 20th April 2018  Ministers have been told to drop their Local Authority ‘veto’ idea, and to focus on doing more to build community confidence and trust. That is the headline conclusion from a review of responses to the Working With Communities (WWC) consultation that have already been published. Although not a statistically representative sample of the responses submitted, the opinions come from all corners of society.

All the expert and public evidence received during the policy development phase said that giving any tier of local government a ‘veto’ over the process would undermine the policy and any concept of ‘community consent’.

Despite that near unanimous opinion, Ministers still decided to include proposals that would give local authorities the power to block the will of the community. There has been a consistent and broad-based push back to those proposals in the published consultation responses. GDFWatch believes a veto power would make a mockery of the Government’s own consent-based policy and mean the siting process would be DOA [dead on arrival]. Community and place-based organisations, while fully recognising the integral role of local authorities, were equally
critical of the proposal
http://www.gdfwatch.org.uk/2018/04/20/consultations-closed-what-now-summary-of-responses/

April 25, 2018 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | general