By Alan Irving

Last updated at 11:44, Thursday, 19 July 2012

ONLY a handful of councillors will make the crucial decision on whether to look for somewhere in West Cumbria to bury highly radioactive waste.

It will be left to 24 of the 191 councillors elected to Copeland, Allerdale and Cumbria County Council. They sit on the respective Executives of Copeland and Allerdale Borough Council’s and Cumbria County Council’s Cabinet.

The rest of Copeland’s 51 members, Allerdale’s 56 and the county council’s 84 will not be entrusted with the final decision; they will have the chance to debate the issue at full council meetings beforehand and make their views known but nothing more.

The two borough Executives are represented by seven members each, and the county council Cabinet has 10 members.

The hands of the three local authorities are tied by local government legislation which requires the top tier councillors to make the decision. D-day is some time in the autumn.

Copeland council leader Elaine Woodburn, the Partnership’s new chairman, said: “I was as disappointed as anyone when I found out that, due to changes brought in by the coalition government’s Localism Act, all 51 councillors at Copeland could not take a decision about participation (or not) in the next stage of the MRWS process. This will now be considered by the Executive.

“However it is still our intention to allow all members to have their say at full council prior to the Executive meeting.

“The ultimate decision will be based on councillors’ views, the response to the consultation and the full report of the Partnership. This will be a big decision and one, if it was down to Copeland, we would have let all councillors take – clearly not the government’s view.”

The decision will be whether or not to instigate a search to try and find a geologically suitable location in which to build an underground repository up to four times as big as Sellafield.

Only one of the two borough councils needs to agree to a site search but it could not happen unless the county council Cabinet is in similar agreement. Otherwise the long drawn-out process will stop.

The decision will be made on the back of three years of preliminary work carried out by the West Cumbria Managing Radioactive Waste Safely (MRWS) Partnership. It has examined all the issues culminating in a Mori telephone poll which showed 68 per cent of people in Copeland and 51 per cent in Allerdale favouring a site search.

However, the Cumbria Association of Local Councils (CALC), representing many of the area’s parish and town councils, thinks that searching for a site “is not credible or viable unless major changes are made”.

Chairman Keith Hitchen told The Whitehaven News that CALC wanted to see assurances over “right of withdrawal, volunteerism and community benefits” put into tablets of stone through legal documents.

“If this happened it might change the minds of some parishes, we’d have to wait and see,” he said, adding that, as a Copeland councillor, he hoped his own full council would be able to take the important decision but this was not possible.

Meanwhile MRWS will present its final report to the local authorities after a meeting in Workington today but will not make a recommendation either way.

A spokesman said: “The Partnership is not coming to a view about whether the area should take part in the search for a site – that decision is for the three councils.

“In order for an area to proceed to the next stage there would need to be agreement by a borough council and the county council.

“If Allerdale and or Copeland were to take part in the search for a site they would enter the siting process which would include a series of steps to narrow down from possibly suitable areas to specific sites, this would include detailed studies and investigations of the area’s geology.”

Although MRWS gives no recommendations, it does give its opinion on some of the sensitive issues.

One is the government’s promised community benefits package for any area in which a repository is eventually sited.

And the Partnerships draft report says: “We believe a final decision to accept a repository should only be made if the community is convinced government – and future governments that follow – will honour commitments on community benefits.”

It would also expect any package to be “a substantial long-term investment in infrastructure, services or skills provided by the government that benefits the whole community”.

The Partnership spokes-man pointed out: “Talking to the government about having this site does not commit anyone to it – it would be well over a decade before any construction could start and the councils would have the right to withdraw from the process up to that point.”

First published at 11:10, Thursday, 19 July 2012
Published by http://www.whitehavennews.co.uk