Democracy should not be an April Fools’ Day Joke!

NFLA 1st April 2025

At a time when, across the Atlantic and in Europe, democracy seems to be increasingly challenged and in peril, the UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities finds it incongruous and worrying that undemocratic practices can be discovered nearer to home when it comes to plans to locate a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) in Cumbria.

The GDF would be the eventual repository for Britain’s high-level legacy and future radioactive waste.

Cumberland Council replaced three existing Councils – Allerdale District Council, Copeland District Council and Cumbria County Council – with their powers and resources being subsumed into the new unitary authority.

During the period of the Conservative – Liberal Democrat Coalition Government, Councils were invited to express an interest in participating in investigations for a site for a deep repository in West Cumbria. After four years of involvement, Cumberland’s predecessor Cumbria County Council vetoed the process, when in January 2013, the Council’s Cabinet voted to withdraw its support.

At that time, Council leader Eddie Martin explained the rationale behind the decision: “Cabinet believes there is sufficient doubt around the suitability of West Cumbria’s geology to put an end now to the uncertainty and worry this is causing for our communities. Cumbria is not the best place geologically in the UK and the government’s efforts need to be focused on disposing of the waste underground in the safest place, not the easiest. Members have remained concerned throughout on the issue of the legal right of withdrawal if we proceed to the next stage.”[i]

The County Council’s decision trumped the continued support for the process shown by the lower Allerdale and Copeland District Councils, and so it effectively ended the process at the time.

In the latest attempt to bring a GDF to Cumbria, Allerdale and Copeland again choose to support Nuclear Waste Services, with both Councils becoming the Relevant Principal Local Authorities which are necessary to keep the process going.

Although the County Council was the biggest amongst the three former Councils merged into the new unitary authority, Cumberland Council ignored its opposition and instead chose to ape the position taken by the two lower district councils; this despite the fact that Nuclear Waste Services had already withdrawn from Allerdale citing ‘insufficient’ suitable geology and that Copeland was only taken into the GDF process by the Council’s Executive of only FOUR senior Councillors, including some holding appointments on the West Cumbria Site Stakeholder Group which are renumerated by Nuclear Waste Services. The whole Council was not asked to agree.

Now campaigners at Radiation Free Lakeland have launched a petition calling on Cumberland Council to convene a belated special meeting of the Full Council where Councillors can debate and then vote upon whether to continue to remain engaged with the process of investigating sites for a GDF in Mid- and South-Copeland and to remain represented on the two Community Partnerships. Should most Councillors vote against engagement and representation, in either Mid- or South-Copeland, then the process in that area would cease and NWS would withdraw.

In the third area under consideration for a GDF, the Theddlethorpe Search Area in Lincolnshire, the Leaders of both Relevant Principal Local Authorities, East Lindsey District Council and Lincolnshire County Council, have recommended to their Executives that they should withdraw. The East Lindsey District Council Executive meets tomorrow (2 April) to decide upon the issue. The decision of Lincolnshire County Council must follow the elections held for that body on 1 May. If both recommendations are accepted and are backed by Councillors on their respective Scrutiny Boards, the process will end. This is what happened at South Holderness where the East Riding of Yorkshire Council overwhelmingly voted to withdraw from the process.

The Radiation Free Lakeland sponsored petition reads:………………………………….. https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/democracy-should-not-be-an-april-fools-day-joke/