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Lincolnshire Votes to Dump its “Partnership” with Nuclear Waste Services for a “Geological Disposal Facility,” meanwhile the Lake District Coast’s NWS Dump Partnership Is Labelled “Dysfunctional”




The area of least resistance is East of Sellafield - despite the presence of the “atomic carbuncle” as the late great Wainwright called it, this area of the Lake District coast is beautiful with small villages dotted about in contrast to Sellafield which is an anachronism in this ancient and historic area which should be doubly cherished not further trashed by the nuclear juggernaut.


PETITION to sign here to stop the nuclear juggernaut on the Lake District coast.


Lincolnshire Councillors have moved to pull the plug on talks to bury nuclear waste in open countryside near their coast in a vast deep mine which would stretch out under the North Sea. Yesterday members of Lincolnshire County Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Management Board recommended the council’s Executive withdraw from a community partnership it joined with Nuclear Waste Services (NWS) in 2021, ending Lincolnshire’s involvement in the Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) siting process.

This leaves the Lake District coast in the frame but all is not going to plan here either with the “Community Partnerships” between local councils and the developer Nuclear Waste Services being labeled “dysfunctional”.


The following is a press release from the Nuclear Free Local Authorities outlining the ongoing shenanigans. … you could not make it up.






NFLA media release, 29 May 2025. For immediate use.

Dysfunctional: review reveals South Copeland GDF partnership at war.


It reads like the potential plot for a sequel novel to J K Rowling’s ‘A Casual Vacancy’. For the report of the review of the South Copeland GDF Community Partnership highlights internal disarray, with members in conflict with an overbearing Nuclear Waste Services, whilst experiencing increasing opposition within the local community.


The catalyst for the review was the letter of withdrawal of Millom Town Council dated 28 November 2024, detailing numerous criticisms of its composition and function.

No consideration appears to have been given by NWS to have convened a Task and Finish Group with Community Partnership members. Such a group could have been charged with discretely, though earnestly, considering the criticisms raised in the Millom Town Council letter, and then to bring back its own report to the Partnership with its own recommendations.

Instead, NWS commissioned an ‘external review of the South Copeland GDF Community to ensure that is effectively fulfilling its purpose and meeting the needs of the local community’; which for the NFLAs begs two key questions, who determines its purpose and how are local needs defined?


For the review, Mary Bradley, the former Chair of the Allerdale GDF Community Partnership, was commissioned by NWS to conduct interviews with Partnership members and the NWS team and write a report with her recommendations.


We have been informed that Ms Bradley was asked to produce the report before Christmas, but that Community Partnership members did not actually see it until April.

Throughout the duration of the review, and indeed to date, NWS has suspended meetings of the Community Partnership, even though they have no right to do so under the current policy.

This suspension has embraced a critical period in which the Area of Focus was announced in the South Copeland GDF Search Area (as also happened in Mid-Copeland and Theddlethorpe) and a series of in-person and virtual information events were held, organised by NWS. Newsletters and updates to the website have continued to be published by NWS during this time.


Community Partnership members had no say or input into any of these activities. Is this Partnership?


A post-review meeting of the Community Partnership has yet to be convened.

Reading the report, the Community Partnership could be compared to a ‘Potemkin Village’. For whilst on the surface it ‘appears to be a well-organised and managed partnership with everything in place’, the interviews with members revealed a ‘deep-seated dissatisfaction with almost every aspect’ and ‘a sense of frustration of non-action.’ This led to the reviewer in her Executive Review delivering her damning verdict that over time the Partnership has become‘dysfunctional’.


The review is predicated upon the tenet that the government’s ‘Policy-defined role of a Community Partnership takes precedent’ and that its purpose is to make recommendations to ‘assist the South Copeland GDF Community Partnership in being able to operate effectively in meeting its Policy-defined role.’

The latest government policy, the ‘UK policy framework for managing radioactive substances and nuclear decommissioning’, published in May last year, defines the role thus: i

  • facilitate discussion with the community;

  • identify relevant information that people in the Search Area and Potential Host Community

    want or need about the siting process;

  • be the key vehicle for community dialogue with NWS;

  • review and refine the boundaries of the Search Area as NWS’s investigations progress;

  • identify priorities for Community Investment Funding;

  • make recommendations to the relevant principal local authorities on the Community

    Partnership on whether to invoke the Right of Withdrawal and if, and when, to launch a

    Test of Public Support;

  • agree a programme of activities to develop the community’s understanding of the siting

    process and the potential implications of hosting a GDF;

  • develop a community vision and consider the part a GDF may play in that vision;

  • monitor public opinion in relation to siting a GDF within the Search Area and the Potential Host Community


    Elsewhere in the report it states bluntly that ‘the GDF process requires a Community Partnership that is functioning to policy’. Clearly then an ideal Community Partnership will comprise members who are content to be entirely collaborative of NWS-diktat. It is NWS which sets the detailed operational requirements, and within this remit there is evidently no latitude to challenge the competency or priorities of NWS, nor the central tenet that the NWS-led GDF process is flawless.


    In this case, members who deviated from this in calling NWS to account or wishing to suggest innovations in the process are deemed to make the Partnership ‘dysfunctional’.

    This all sounds something that might have existed in Airstrip One in George Orwell’s dystopian book ‘1984’.


    The NFLAs can sympathise with members frustrated by this straitjacket. They are giving up their time and professional expertise freely and are then castigated and censured if they challenge the status quo and look to innovate.

    It should be remembered they are volunteers, not employees. Amongst the actions labelled ‘contentious’ in the review are calls for:

    • – The commissioning of a social impact report. This would include identifying the adverse impacts of a GDF development, many of whom the NFLAs have previously highlighted in our publications, such as the potential adverse impact on jobs at HMP Haveriggii and in tourismiii, the possible closure of a local wind farmiv, the historic incidence of floodingv, and the likely impact on the rental housing marketvi.

      The report refers contemptuously to ‘myths’ around the future of the prison site, but the NFLAs remain unconvinced that a GDF, which will represent the biggest civil engineering project ever undertaken in the UK, can co-exist, if built on the Haverigg Area of Focus, with a prison located right in the centre of the site. And concern about its future is surely completely legitimate when half the jobs lost in the event of closure would be taken from members of the immediate community.

    • – The ability to source information or commission research from independent third-party sources, with a comment from one of those interviewed ‘If the partnership can commission independent reports, why do they need to utilise the NWS’s process?’

The NFLAs have recently issued a bulletin on the inadequacies of current arrangements.vii To summarise, Community Partnerships are expected to source all their information from NWS and its partners, or in extremis via NWS from a small number of Learned Sources which have signed a Memorandum of Understanding. Community Partnerships have no devolved funds with which to commission third party consultants, nor do they have the required legal status to engage in procurement exercises.


– The creation by the Partnership of its own website ‘built and managed locally’.

The reviewer found it seemingly inexplicable that NWS did not engage in ‘closing down the request speedily’, but to the NFLAs it seems very reasonable to expect at the very least co-production between members and NWS staff of the materials produced and posted to the website; after all it is badged as that of ‘the South Copeland GDF Community Partnership’. viii It also seems reasonable for members to co-produce the newsletter that goes out in their name.


There is currently a Communications and Engagement Sub-Group. Why cannot the Terms of Reference be adjusted to allow this sub-group to have oversight? ix

These inadequacies are symptomatic of the complaint highlighted elsewhere in the report that documentation is ‘not owned by the Partnership’. It will not be, as the primary purpose of the Partnership is to lend local legitimacy to the dissemination of positive NWS messages about the GDF process and the benefits that might accrue following site selection. It is notable that in Mid or South Copeland neither the respective websites nor the respective newsletters ever contain any dissenting articles from critics or opponents of GDF, something at least conceded in Lincolnshire.


Consequently, it seems hypocritical for the reviewer to elsewhere bewail members for calling the NWS team a ‘secretariat’. NWS staff produce the agendas and write the minutes and supporting papers for meetings; organise and issue the invites to these meetings and to public events; respond to public enquiries; write the newsletters and update content on the website and on social media. These are exactly the functions of a ‘secretariat’. There is NO ‘ownership by the Partnership’.


- The selection and renumeration of a Chair.

Although the report talks of the outgoing Chair being personally ‘well-liked and respected’, it then goes on to say that members ‘look forward to the election of a new chair and are busy writing the role profile and election profile’, suggesting that all is not rosy with arrangements at the top. When asked why this was necessary, the reviewer was told ‘the need to distance (the Chair) from NWS was the key factor’ and elsewhere it references that these activities are ‘to deal with the relationship with NWS and some of the perceived non-delivery’. This could suggest that members felt the outgoing Chair was too close to NWS and that current arrangements were not always effectual.


It is also worth noting that the outgoing Community Partnership Chair was also the Chair of Millom Town Council. It was the letter of complaint sent by Millom Town Council which NWS used as a pretext to immediately suspend the Partnership and trigger a review.

The issue of the payment of expenses and honorarium is described as ‘thorny’. In the NFLA’s view it is not unreasonable for members to be reimbursed out-of-pocket expenses and to be offered a modest honorarium for their work; however, we have previously raised concerns about the egregiously large payments made to former Chairs at Theddlethorpe and an overly large payment to the South Copeland Chair might make him or her more beholden to NWS. This is one to watch.


The reviewer says that it is ‘surprising’...‘that the majority of the partnership members don’t want to engage with the Community Investment Fund and there is no recognition that they have a duty to sign off the awards.’ This is unsurprising to the NFLAs. Members may not want to be associated with a fund that to many represents an undisguised form of blatant bribery and is consequently held in high contempt.


The CIF is designed to disperse largesse to keep any community on board with the GDF process and provides a useful mechanism to promote NWS ‘feel good’ messages. Grants to community groups are invariably accompanied by good news stories with photographs of smiling recipients, often children and young people, stood in a refurbished community hall or next to state-of-the-art play equipment.


These articles are clearly designed to associate the GDF process with positive community improvements and so ‘good’. They represent a tantalising glimpse of the promised bounty that would follow selection of a site for GDF – a land of milk and honey for all. NWS gains especially from any positive association that forms in the minds of the young people involved – for they in many instances will have grown to majority by the time any Test of Public Support takes place and so might be more inclined to vote ‘yes’ to the project.

In these circumstances is it ‘surprising’ that some discerning Community Partnership members, being troubled by their personal consciences, might find participation in the disbursement of CIF funds distasteful?


The positive messages associated with CIF are not of course besmirched with any reference to the historic radioactive contamination discharged by Sellafield into the sea and local water courses, onto beaches, and into the air that continues to this day; the blight that has already befallen the local housing market in and around the designated Areas of Focus; or the daily anxiety experienced by many affected residents who fear that their quality of life, and that of their families and friends, might eventually be massively adversely compromised if their Area is over time selected as the GDF site. Instead, CIF is about accentuating the ‘positive’.


Notably the report also sidesteps any aspiration to a Social Impacts survey, instead there is a focus on moving forward with the Visioning exercise. This will of course focus on the ‘benefits’ of a GDF – the jobs and apprenticeships that will supposedly be created, the additional income that will flow to local businesses, and the enhancements of transport and of local amenities that might result. Nothing about the ‘negatives’.


In anticipation of this work, a second consultation on the ‘visioning exercise’ has recently been relaunched online. The NFLAs and local objectors have been critical; for anyone from Haverigg to Honolulu and from Millom to Melbourne can fill it in – and maybe has. And they can make multiple submissions to skew the result.


There are no checks to ensure that only residents of the South Copeland GDF Search Area can reply and that only one response can be made by each.

As the NFLA Secretary himself pointed out in a post on the Community Partnership Facebook page, respondents could even include Nuclear Waste Services or Nuclear Decommissioning Authority staff. (For the record, he has not completed the form himself).

How then can NWS claim that the results really reflect the aspirations and views of local people?


It is worth noting that the ‘visioning exercise’ was launched during a time when the Community Partnership was suspended and so unable to comment. This is again obviously not Partnership.


It is interesting to contrast the credibility that NWS attaches to this flawed exercise to the ready dismissal of local polls. Whicham Parish Council polled its 400 or so parishioners. Amongst the 250 or so respondents, the results, verified by the council’s auditors, were: In favour of a GDF

– 15.15%; Against – 76.62%; Don’t Know – 6.49%; and Blank forms – 1.73%.

These replies were from local people, not from unknown persons hiding behind a keyboard.

The NFLAs have previously written to local Parish and Town Councils urging them to conduct similar polls to determine local sentiment towards the proposal. This attracting a countermove by Cumberland Council Councillor Fryer who also contacted them to urge them not to.


The report concludes with a recommendation that the Community Partnership be ‘refreshed’ with attention to a vast swathe of issues, bringing in a facilitator with ‘a good understanding of GDF partnership working to enable the process to move forward swiftly’. The intention is to ensure the ‘partnership is stable and functioning’. Agendas must in future be focussed ‘on the deliverables of the Partnership’, with a culture change from ‘holding NWS to account to partnership working.’


The suggested changes in procedures and focus, coupled with a promised review of membership, are clearly designed to curb the power of dissenters. The proposal for more joint working with the Mid-Copeland GDF Community Partnership over visioning and the inclusion of a possible third option to ‘move to a combined partnership with Mid-Copeland’ are means to further curtail their influence by subsuming them into a larger body.

It is concerning that the checklist of recommendations notably fails to include any of the aspirations of members to an independent website, a separate social impact report, access to independent information and a truly independent Chair.


Membership of the South Copeland GDF Community Partnership has already been in decline in recent months, as well as disarray. The Partnership has lost a representative from Millom Town Council and a representative from the Business Community. Whicham Parish Council will soon reconsider its membership, as well as a motion condemning and rejecting the selection of the Area of Focus around the HMP Haverigg prison site, following the lead shown by Seascale.


Opposition to the GDF is growing amongst the residents of South Copeland, especially in the Bank Head and Kirksanton areas which are now under greatest threat. They were never given a voice before the possibility of an unwanted GDF development was brought to their doorstep. The report references that ‘Questions (at public events) are often confrontational’. This is hardly surprising; for why would anyone welcome something they have never wanted?

As Marianne Birkby from Radiation Free Lakeland commented: “This should be expected as this high-level nuclear waste dump would be the biggest development in the UK ever and people want to know the adverse impacts rather than the mantra that it would be ‘safe’. Informed consent to an experiment with public health and safety requires flagging up adverse impacts.”


That local people are overwhelmingly opposed to a GDF was made plain in the postal poll carried out by Whicham Parish Council quoted above. A recent annual Parish meeting condemned the GDF and called on Whicham Parish Council to do likewise.

Continued pressure from local people may lead Whicham Parish Councillors to withdraw their support and pass a motion condemning and rejecting the selection of the Area of Focus around the HMP Haverigg prison site, following the lead shown by Seascale in Mid-Copeland.


In private conversations and emails with the NFLA Secretary, some Community Partnership members have expressed their frustration at remaining ‘voiceless’ as meetings have been suspended for months, whilst NWS considered the findings of the report and arrangements are made to elect a new Chair. Imagine then how frustrated members of the public are feeling having had no real say on the process so far?

Given these circumstances, disenchanted Community Partnership members might want to consider the report’s advice that ‘if they are unable to buy into the plan, they will be able to consider their position on the partnership’.


This clearly is an exhortation to get with the new programme or get the push. Creativity and free thinking are clearly not to be encouraged.

And there are hints elsewhere that members deemed to be troublesome will soon run out of road: ‘There needs to be thought given to the length of office of partnership members rather than removal being voluntary or because of poor performance.’


One conspiratorial closing comment.

A well-placed internal source has postulated that NWS may be keen to have secured a report which states that they tried to work with the Partnership, but it failed due to the intransigence of some members.

This could in the medium-term be used as justification to action the merger of Mid- and South- Copeland GDF Community Partnerships.

However, long-term it contributes to an ‘evidence base’ that might ultimately be used as leverage for Ministers to trigger the provisions of Appendix 1, Section 9 of the current policy which states:

“the Government reserves the right to explore other approaches in the event that, at some point in the future, this approach does not look likely to work.”xi

The published report of the review can be found at:

The recommended actions following the review can be found at:

Ends//..For more information please email Richard Outram, NFLA Secretary at

This media release can also be found on the NFLA website at:

iv https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/is-the-haverigg-wind-project-once-more-under-a-nuclear-threat/v https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/ask-the-locals-nfla-chair-says-it-is-prudent-and-proper-for-nuclear-waste-services-to- consult-residents-over-south-copeland-flooding-risk/vi https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/would-nuke-dump-bring-a-sizewell-c-effect-to-copeland-housing/vii https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/briefings/nfla-policy-briefing-317-the-media-scientific-consensus-and-toxic-nuclear-waste/viii https://southcopeland.workinginpartnership.org.uk/ix https://southcopeland.workinginpartnership.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Communications-Engagement-Subgroup-ToR- 1.pngx https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/scared-of-getting-the-wrong-answer-nflas-remain-convinced-local-polls-have-value/xi https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6632371769098ded31fca7c1/managing-radioactive-substances-and-nuclear- decommissioning-uk-policy-framework.pdf Appendix 1, Section 9, Page 93

 
 
 

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