Published at 11:11, Thursday, 06 September 2012

SIR – In an article in last week’s Whitehaven News, watch manager David Moore of Seascale Fire Station claims communities are being put at risk because of Cumbria Fire and Rescue Services’ inability to recruit suitable firefighters.

SIR – It seems Copeland council have put out their ‘Waste Service Changes Proposal’ without having the time or expertise to think through the details.

Certainly the information made available by CBC is so incomplete and misleading that the affected residents don’t know who they are and, even if they did, will be unable to make comprehensive comments or complaints about such ill-defined proposals. The current consultation should be ruled invalid.

Clearly this is not a proposed saving by improving efficiency but is cost cutting by discriminating against specific groups of electors by significantly downgrading their waste service.

The detrimental consequences cannot be fully listed until better information is made available by CBC but a few that the council have admitted to are:-

In cases where properties are deemed uneconomic for waste collection, the often elderly residents will have to struggle to the road end with their refuse – in some cases over half a mile up very steep slopes. Then they will still see the bin lorry pass their house to empty the bins of holiday lets etc.

Large numbers of wheelie bins will have to be left permanently at road ends in the environmentally sensitive National Park. These will be an unwelcome eyesore – although better than CBC’s alternative of large piles of bin bags which are prey to foxes and vermin.

Although these unsecured bins will be far from the residents’ properties, those ‘owners’ will be held responsible for what is put in the bin by any fly tipper. And if the council deem the bin too full or that it contains ‘foreign’ material, it will be left to rot un-emptied. Such bins can cause other hazards or sustain damage over which the ‘owners’ will have little control but CBC will accept no liability.

Dr J & Mrs S WEDLEY

Dr M & Mrs K STAVELEY

Mr J & Mrs B TYSON

Eskdale

SIR – I would like to express my concerns over the proposals to change the collection of wheelie bins in High Winder Lane, Wilton, Egremont.

The lane is in constant use by farm vehicles, private vehicles and pedestrians. These are required to negotiate a tight exit or entrance to and from the main road. The idea of having at least 10 bins restricting the entrance for what potentially could be a whole day per week can only result in an increase in the danger to the public using this lane and also people using the main road.

I am also concerned with the health and safety of the residents on this lane. The lane is full of potholes and is uneven. Some of the residents are elderly and suffer with age related illnesses. This proposal would create a considerable risk to the health and safety of these people if they are required to drag their bins (that are not designed for this purpose) to the top of the lane for collection particularly in winter when the potholes have frozen over and the lane is covered in snow and ice!

Also the Health and Safety Executive’s guidance and regulations relating to manual handling, states that all lifting, pushing or pulling of heavy loads should be avoided where possible and that individual capabilities should be taken into account when assessing risks. I would suggest that by asking people to pull heavy wheelie bins across uneven surfaces that are not designed for that purpose, the council is putting the public who they represent at great risk of injury or even worse!

Surely the council has a duty of care to ensure the health, safety and welfare to the public as well as its employees relating to all the services they provide?

This is part of section three of Cumbria County Council’s Health & Safety Policy: “The council is committed to the provision and maintenance of safe and healthy working conditions, equipment and systems of work for all employees and other persons affected by its activities and services, and as such will comply with current applicable health and safety legislation”.

So by asking the above mentioned residents to do this task, you are going against your own commitments to the public.

I have been unable to download the council’s ‘Waste Management Customer Charter’ (as the link appears to be broken). This, I presume should contain the council’s commitment to a safe, reliable and efficient service to their customers.

I would hope the council will take these points seriously and consider them when making their decisions for change, as a claim for injury when someone is seriously hurt trying to pull their bin across snow and ice would probably be more than the amount they would save by altering the way the collections are now. Or would that claim be covered by the council’s public protection insurance and not be an issue to them?

NB: The collection time on the lane is approx five minutes.

Steve HUNTER

Wilton

This is no doubt a big problem but it is made worse by the services policy of using retained personnel (part-time) to fill gaps on whole-time stations across the county.

In his reply, Adrian Buckle says that the service has never failed to answer a 999 call in any area of the county. What he fails to mention is where the responding appliance is coming from.

On one occasion a whole-time appliance from Whitehaven was mobilised to a road traffic accident at Drigg Road, Seascale. This whole-time appliance was sent because retained appliances at Egremont and Seascale were unavailable because of a lack of personnel.

The journey from Whitehaven to the incident took approximately 20 minutes. The Seascale appliance would have taken five or six minutes. This time delay is not acceptable as the minutes lost in getting to the incident can make the difference between life and death.

Over the past few years, and before the latest austerity measures, Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service has suffered from cuts.

Workshop facilities have been reduced, special appliances have gone, the number of whole-time fire-fighters is at on all time low and Cumbria’s control room has now gone to Cheshire. The Fire Service cannot be cut any more.

The police is now recruiting again. Money should be made available to let the Fire Service do the same before a firefighter or member of the public is killed or injured.

Name and address supplied

SIR – Can anyone inform me about the latest goings-on at the former Marchon site?

As most of us are aware, the site closed in 2001/2004 And demolition work soon followed being completed in around 2006. Around this time I attended meetings with the National Trust about the future development of the whole site excluding the office block end as this had been sold off to a property developer who were turned down on a housing development due to a long list of reasons mainly because A Housing development would compromise the Development potential of the site as an long term Employment Opportunity Site. Yet the monopoly man Himself Fred story of story homes (housing developer ) has now acquired the site!!!!Any way coming away from that matter.

I and others attended meetings at the St Mary’s Club where we were made aware that Rhodia UK were going to hand the site over to the Land Restoration Trust and the National Trust.

We also attended a full site visit to see the area and give development ides. Nothing ever came of this so a couple of months ago I contacted the Rhodia representative for the Whitehaven site who informed me they had failed to work with the Land Restoration Trust and the Whitehaven site was still fully owned by Rhodia UK .

I have now noticed there is work happening on the site and signs have been attached to the main gates stating that the site has been acquired by Whitehaven Developments. It also says that work is being undertaken by Gilmerton Land Services on behalf of Whitehaven developments. Does anybody now more about what’s now happening on this part of the site?

Name and address supplied

SIR – In last week’s editorial under ‘Rumour Mill’ you commented “It’s silly season. Parliament is not sitting, local government business has slowed to a snail’s pace etc.” and apparently to prove it you printed on your letters page one headed “Nuclear investments still won’t offset impact of Thorp closure” from Coun Knowles.

What is it about Cumbria’s ruling classes, from MP to councillors? Are they all on hallucinatory drugs or simply incapable of logical reasoning and common sense?

To quote from The Whitehaven News in June: “Thorp reprocessing was due to finish in 2010 but the serious liquor leak in 2005 has extended closure until 2018.”

Why then, as both Thorp’s and MOX’s operational and financial failures to the tune of millions have been publicly admitted, is he moaning when Thorp has already had an extension of eight years?

With the 600 MOX workers already being ‘absorbed’ into the Sellafield workforce (at taxpayer’s expense) I am sure that the 800 of the Thorp workforce (yes 800, not his thousands) will similarly be ‘absorbed’ (at taxpayer’s expense) in 2018.

In a May 2009 in an article on www.bellona.org on Thorp’s evaporators, Charles Digges reported on the emergency shutdown of Evaporator B saying that “a new evaporator, at a cost of £100 million, is under construction, but unlikely to come online before 2013.”

An I-Nuclear article in February 2012 entitled “Sellafield’s Evaporator D to come in at ‘well below £1 billion’ following 2009 redesign” says: “However, the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority says that improvements at the existing Evaporator C mean that the new evaporator, Evaporator D, is no longer critical to the continued operation of the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (Thorp). Evaporator D, they say, will be used as well for post-closure clean-up operations.

Thorp is currently scheduled to close in 2018 upon completion of its existing contracts for reprocessing, but Evaporator D isn’t scheduled for active commissioning until December 2015, according to the latest information available to the UK Office for Nuclear Regulation. That date is now considered unlikely to be met – meaning the multi-million pound Evaporator D could serve Thorp for substantially less than three years.

Hence Evaporator D, now costing an undetermined amount in excess of £400m of taxpayer’s money and now with an undetermined delivery date sometime after 2015, is now effectively ‘redundant’.

At the end of the MRWS Consultation process a much vaunted phone poll of 4,262 people evidently found that 45 per cent of those contacted still knew very little or couldn’t care less after three years and circa £3million of taxpayer’s money being spent on supposedly informing them.

With all the acknowledged Sellafield failures mentioned above, how can Coun Knowles say “we have enormous experience of handling these materials in this area and local people understand much about the safety, economic and environmental issues”?

I have commented previously on the crass stupidity and dictatorial ‘Only Sellafield is suitable for a power station’ political and union attitude which has overruled the common-sense of having it at Kirksanton which would a) generate power nearer to the end user, b) ease the logistics of transporting the containerised AP1000 reactors to the site and c) reduce the vastly increased cost of having to route the National Grid the full length of Cumbria whilst also negating the current NIMBY pylon or underground argument. Isn’t Millom in Copeland?

Perhaps the ex MRWS chair’s last paragraph that says “It’s time for everyone, not just the politicians and unions, to take a real interest, otherwise the opportunity of quality jobs and a future for our young people is going to reduce dramatically and soon” his way of trying to justify and gather support for a GDF at a critical time? Surely it’s time for Cumbria’s ‘leadership’ to realise that whilst the buried dead may not haunt us, the WC:MRWS’s GDF ‘crusade’ of burying the nuclear waste in an unsuitable Cumbrian geology is likely to haunt the young people for many generations whether they have jobs or not given the current evidence and isn’t this view substantiated by the legal rejection of Nirex nearly 20 years ago?

Why does he fight the storage of Low Level Waste and not High Level Waste? Why does he praise the French who succeeded with MOX where Sellafield failed? Why does he praise the French GDF at Bure which is on a flat inland area with safe geology and not within a 20km INES exclusion zone (features also adopted by the USA) that are totally opposite to what the MRWS propose?

Finally let’s ask him to tell us as to how they are going to get the 750 AP1000 containers each 80ft by 12ft by 12ft and 80tons from Workington Docks to Sellafield?

After all is this not his responsibility – as Cumbria County Council’s Cabinet member for Transport and Environment including nuclear waste – to answer?

Arthur Millie

Longcroft, Egremont

SIR – On visiting loved ones at West Cumberland Hospital I was taken on a marathon around the hospital as they move the patients at visiting time to other wards. I think this is outrageous.

Visiting time is not visiting time any more, it’s marathon time. You should be allowed to go and sit and spend quality time in these hours. No wonder nobody wants to spend time there.

Bring back matron, because they have too much spare time on their hands, there’s too much conversation with them all now, and no feelings for people who come to visit.

Mrs R GLAISTER

Mirehouse, Whitehaven

SIR – I am disappointed and perturbed by Mr Farr’s letter denigrating the greatest Englishman that ever lived.

I have never seen such claptrap in all my life.

Churchill was a human being, thus not immune to making mistakes – just like Wilson (devaluation), Thatcher (school milk, not miners’ strike!), Blair (Iraq), Brown (economic ruin) and Cameron (? ). And also Mr Farr and myself it would seem. On balance, there has never been a man whose foresight (which if heeded may have even prevented World War II), integrity, leadership, oratory, courage, dogged determination and, last but not least, mastery of the English language, has ever been equalled.

As an Englishman (is he?), Mr Farr should be ashamed of himself. I would suggest that before committing himself to print about Churchill that he reads Churchill’s The Second World War, Sir Martin Gilbert’s biographies and histories, Sir Max Hastings Finest Years and many other books about Churchill, the pre-war years and the war itself – which I would be happy to lend him if his local library cannot.

Churchill was a man of his time and was able to rally this country with his oratory (despite his speech impediment) in its hour of greatest need. Churchill was our greatest ever statesman, a great politician but most of all our greatest Englishman. Be thankful Mr Farr – we (or most of us!) are still speaking English (regardless of language derivations).

Mr Farr’s name and mine will never go down in history – but Churchill’s will!

Neil BINGHAM

Hensingham

Published by http://www.whitehavennews.co.uk