Examination of Witnesses (Questions 524
- 539)
WEDNESDAY 27 JANUARY 2010 (afternoon)
MS MARIANNE
BIRKBY, MS
PAULINE PRESTON,
MR IMITAZ
MOHAMED AND
MS JENNY
HAWKES
Q524 Dr Whitehead:
Good afternoon Ms Birkby, Ms Hawkes, Mr Mohamed and Ms Preston;
perhaps you would introduce yourselves, please, for the record
this afternoon.
Ms Preston: Yes, of course. My
name is Pauline Preston and I am representing the residents of
Kirksanton in West Cumbria.
Mr Mohamed: My name is Imitaz
Mohamed, I am a resident of Kirksanton and I have come to keep
Pauline company.
Ms Hawkes: Hello, I am Jenny Hawkes,
and I am here to represent the residents of Braystones in West
Cumbria.
Ms Birkby: I am Marianne Birkby
and I am here to represent the group Radiation Free Lakeland.
Q525 Dr Whitehead:
Perhaps, Ms Birkby, you would like to start your presentation
to us.
Ms Birkby: Radiation Free Lakeland
was formed in 2008 following Cumbria County Council's expression
of interest in the geological disposal of nuclear waste and then,
following on from that, the proposed three sites in Cumbria. We
have supporters from all walks of life in Cumbria and further
afield including the State of Nevada who spoke on Radio Cumbria
urging councillors not to just take the advice of government and
the industry but to look at other advice as well from other sectors.
With regards to Sellafield, we feel the consultation process for
that, rather than being consulted really we feel we have been
insulted. The actual date of the meeting was on January 13—this
was the public consultation meeting—and that was when it
was really quite snowy and a lot of people in rural areas of Cumbria,
although they wanted to go to the meeting, could not actually
go. With regard to the submissions of evidence a lot of our supporters
and people who really want to say no to new building in Cumbria,
they have not got easy access to computers. As you probably know,
in rural Cumbria quite a lot of libraries are being closed so
it is not quite as easy to actually get to access all the huge
amount of documents—if you wanted to print off the documents
it would cost you a fortune in a library. That is just one of
the issues. A big thing really is that we feel the whole consultation
is a way of promoting the national nuclear policy statement, which
we really see as a dodgy dossier on a par with the one that led
the country into war with Iraq; it is promoting new build as being
carbon free, climate friendly, it is promoting new build as being
safe for the environment, it is promoting new build as being safe
for human health, it is economic, sustainable, home-grown. All
these things are just not the case. Just to take one instance,
it has already been mentioned before about all the hidden subsidies
but there is also the issue of insurance, just insuring the existing
waste at Sellafield. Just to give you an analogy, I am a wildlife
artist and I have to take out £5 million worth of public
liability insurance just to be able to set foot in a field, a
show field, for example the County Show in Cumbria, or the Eskdale
Show or the Gosforth Show. That is what I need to take out as
public liability insurance as a wildlife artist, and if you attend
a show in Cumbria there are maybe 30 artists within that tent.
Their insurance is far greater than the public liability that
Sellafield has to pay for its high level waste tanks and the waste
at Sellafield. Nuclear power is at the top of the industrial food
chain, it is a top polluter. Being a wildlife artist is kind of
a fairly benign occupation and yet I have to take out £5
million just in case my easel falls on somebody at a show. The
injustice of it is one thing. It is quite extraordinary really
that while the nuclear industry is not required to insure itself
for radioactive waste liability—and we have just heard that
the new build would include waste that is much, much more hazardous—the
Department of Energy and Climate Change is promoting the building
of these new reactors—there are several reactors now planned
for the Sellafield site and they will produce radioactive waste
that is much more hazardous than the existing waste. They have
really got a blank cheque as far as that is concerned. As far
as being carbon free and climate friendly we know, living in Cumbria,
that Sellafield has a back-up power plant at Fellside, a combined
heat and power plant, and this is the case with every new nuclear
power plant that is proposed, it is going to need some sort of
back-up power because it is not like other sources of energy—wind
turbines or hydro-electric. If the energy supply to them stops
there is not going to be a catastrophe but with nuclear power
there may well be. We wrote off to the NDA under the Freedom of
Information Act to ask about exactly how much Sellafield purchases
in terms of gas every year, and it is £30 million. That is
pretty substantial. Sellafield stopped producing electricity in
2003 and every year since then it has bought in at least £30
million worth of gas. It has to over-purchase, so any that is
left over is sold on to the National Grid, so to actually say
that nuclear power is carbon free is quite an untruth. The CO2
emissions from Sellafield since 2003 are in excess of three million
tonnes and when we ask the NDA how a secure energy supply would
be met or how Sellafield's own energy requirements would be met
post fossil fuel they have no reply to that. Apart from producing
all this carbon Sellafield also produces greenhouse gases thousands
of times more potent than carbon dioxide. They actually produce
hydrofluorocarbons and, for the period 2007 to 2008, they actually
produced four times more than the previous year which seems pretty
inconsistent with what we are being told at the consultations
when we ask questions or make comments that nuclear power really
is not carbon free. The usual bland statements come back, that
compared to other sources of energy it is. Patently it is not
and it is at the very top of the industrial polluting food chain.
Also, you get these big banners up at the meetings saying "sustainable".
How does that work when at Sellafield the waste that is already
existing there needs to be cooled every day and every day—this
is again information that has been received under a Freedom of
Information request and it is not really anything that has filtered
out to the wider media, the wider media is not picking up on anything
like this—four million gallons are abstracted from Wastwater,
which is Britain's favourite view, every day, and this is essential
to cool the nuclear waste and provide nuclear workers and equipment
with power showers. More water is abstracted from the Calder and
the Ehen than discharges to those rivers as well. I have just
gone through a couple of things there: it is not carbon free and
it is safe for the environment—it is not—and it is
not economic. Perhaps I could just finish off by reading out a
poem from somebody who very much would have wanted to be here.
He was a former Sellafield foreman, he was a poet and he died
last year of a radiation-linked disease. The nuclear industry
actually runs its own compensation scheme for radiation-linked
diseases and the advantage of running this scheme for the industry
is that it effectively gags the people who are under that compensation
scheme. It has paid out millions. This is Duncan's poem, Ticking
Boxes. "The boxes are ticked by those men who've been
picked from the keenest of yes men there, for checks done each
day so the bosses can say that their workforce takes extra care.
But the bosses were tricked by some men that they picked for a
job that all liars can do, composing old fiction that begs a conviction
for writing what still isn't true. For on they run with boxes
ticked, while welding's cracked and something's dripped inside
the cell, where foremen looked for hours on end, in logs and books,
recording all the names of crooks, who wouldn't see and didn't
look behind those windows two feet thick, where fell a steady
drip of ticks. Soon crystals formed as crystals do, from tiny
holes where pressure grew a mist of droplets spewing out, a sign
that should have brought a shout from foremen ticking thrice each
day, when signing names for easy pay, the country paying bigger
lumps to lazy men for growing dumps. Some columns formed with
lost control, as foremen ticked and shirkers stole, five minutes
here then hours there, forsaking safety's measured stare for extra
tea and flashy things that overtime some boxes bring, with elements
whose mass can change the genes of everything in range. Trapped
outside their ticking box, where spillage flows like molten rocks,
with dangers left to grow unseen until one idle chargehand's scream
says `Shut it down and do it quick, before we're all in deeper
shit'. There's been another situation, critical to every nation."
That was Duncan's poem that he wrote last year. It is really every
nation and this consultation is for local people it says, people
who are going to be affected by new build at Sellafield, but the
people who are going to be affected by new build at Sellafield
include people like the Norwegians, and just last March they wrote
a report saying that if there was an accident at Sellafield and
just one per cent of the radioactivity was released from the high
level waste tanks then the actual impact on Norway's industries
such as fishing, tourism and the whole of society's way of life
would be 50 times greater than that of Chernobyl. It is not a
consultation, Norway was not invited to the discussion on 13 January
and nor was Denmark.
Q526 Dr Whitehead:
I am afraid I am going to have to ask you to conclude now.
Ms Birkby: Really what I would
like to say is that new nuclear build is not acceptable anywhere
in Cumbria, especially not at Sellafield in the vicinity of the
world's most ferocious stockpile of radioactive waste.
Q527 Dr Whitehead:
Thank you very much. Ms Preston and Mr Mohamed.
Ms Preston: I do have a comment
on the MPS and the IPC but first I would also like us to take
a step back. As you will be aware Kirksanton is a green field
site and was quite a surprise nomination. Our real problems have
been down to the consultation and engagement process and trying
to find out who is actually monitoring the system. Before 31 March
2009 RWE and Npower had three fairly simple tasks to complete:
they needed to inform the public authorities and land owners of
site nomination and publicise their intention to the general public
and, bearing in mind Kate Barker's work and the subsequent Planning
Act, nominations must not come as a complete shock to a local
community and they should be publicised at the earliest opportunity.
We actually found out about the nomination on 26 February and
it was a Radio Cumbria announcement at 7.30 in the morning. I
think you would all agree that if you went around the room you
would find out that we do not all listen to the same radio programme,
so I actually found out about the nomination via a neighbour knocking
on my door. Following that, on 3 March, 38 letters were delivered
to the Kirksanton residents regarding the nomination. Bearing
in mind the "local community" which DECC very kindly
defined at our public exhibition on Saturday as being those most
affected, that actually meant that the villages to the East and
right of us being Haverigg and Selcroft, separated by but a field,
should also have received a letter and indeed, Millom, the nearest
town, just less than two miles away, so we were looking really
at the local community being circa 9,000 not 38 residents. At
the first public information meeting that was held we were told
that they had bought 180 acres, Layriggs Farm, which is quite
correct. We were then given a map of the site and, obviously being
local and knowing what is outside our back doors and having land
ourselves, we realised that actually it was over 300 acres. RWE
did say that they would put this right; however, on their website
right up to November 2009 it was still down as 180 acres. It is
very significant that this site has been rejigged for the 300
acres, but it then included more landowners and lessees, including
the owner of the wind turbines, a motocross course and a golf
club, none of which had been notified prior to the nomination.
Indeed what we found is that on 4 June RWE were writing to DECC,
to Helen Dwyer, stating that their site plan "could be inaccurate
or could be construed as misleading". I have a copy of that
letter with me and I am very happy to leave that with you. On
the DECC website it states quite clearly that the steps taken
to raise awareness of the nomination with local communities living
in the vicinity of a site, including the landowners of the nominated
sites, are insufficient. It may not be possible for a particular
nomination to be considered further. I do not wish to be rude
now when I make this statement but we, the Kirksanton residents,
do ask how insufficient somebody has to be to be taken off the
process. The other thing of course that we do just want to make
a couple of statements on as well is regarding the inclusion of
a green field site because we do have questions regarding the
actual date that the green field site came to be nominated, and
it is something that yet we have not been able to get an answer
to and we think it is very important to the process and to where
we stand. We do say that so far to date the consultation process
has been flawed, if we follow the DECC engagement rules, and we
do ask the Committee to listen if they would to the transcript
from the public meeting. We asked many searching questions and
got some interesting answers and we would ask that of you. What
I would like to do now is really look just at the inclusion of
the green field site because back in 2007 when the first consultation
processes took place the assumption was that it would be brown
field, on existing or adjacent to existing nuclear facilities.
We can find no reference to the date when the Government would
announce that it was changing this widely-held view. We can find
absolutely no reference if and when this position was made clear
on the original consultation of the strategic siting assessment.
Really these are our questions. We are a green field site, we
are 21 miles due south of Sellafield, we have no infrastructure
so we have really found ourselves in a process that we feel we
do not actually belong in, nobody can give us the answers to our
questions. Really what I would like to do—one of the main
questions is a differential process, if there was one created
and how it was created, and Imataz will make a statement on that.
Mr Mohamed: Fine. We came here
just to talk about the process and how we see it. It is my understanding
that the Planning Act is a plan-led system. This market-led approach
would mean that competition should dictate pricing. The danger
is that those companies that are closest to the spheres of influence,
i.e. RWE in Cumbria, may create anomalies within this system.
The game theory calculation for the price of a nuclear site, one
minus one over N times IVP becomes unviable because you now have
a two-state process of green field versus brown field and I do
not think people have actually understood the implications of
what this would mean in this process. Citigroup and Ian Jackson
in his recent Dungeness study have indicated that the game theory
formula would have to accommodate a decrease in value over time
if there are delays in the process. It is another factor that
needs to be considered. What formula would accommodate for Kirksanton
getting into the first round for an option price of £25,000?
You have created a process where a major company gets through
the first round for £25,000. It may indicate that there is
something not quite right with your actual process. In relation
to a green field versus a brown field it now seems that you require
two competing formulas but, more important, as a green field site
gets development consent, if it is the right size and in the right
place it means that you have got a 60-year add-on clause because
you can keep building if you pick the right site. It is not a
level green playing field in terms of a market-led approach and,
what is more, the Atkins Study cannot find any sites in the whole
country. RWE on the other hand can be invited to Sellafield, get
up in a helicopter and find a site north of Sellafield and find
a site south of Sellafield. The Atkins Study cost a lot of money;
maybe you should be looking for a refund, they could not find
another site. It is barely credible. In terms of a green field
site, if you actually look at a green field site and try and do
a differential analysis of the differences between what a green
field site is in relation to a brown field site, certain anomalies
crop up again. There are a lot of things we can look at. One of
the things we need to actually understand is how the Planning
Act interfaces with EN-6 and we particularly need to look at things
like impact assessments and the socio-economic parts of that impact
assessment. The socio-economic impact assessments, because of
the nature of Kirksanton should maybe have been rural-proofed.
Kirksanton is a rural community on the definition of what rural
is. This community may not exist in its present format if this
proposal goes ahead, and I will deal with that later, because
it is about sustainability. Negative socio-economic assessments
need to be mitigated. This is what the Planning Act says. This
is why this is done and it is sent to the IPC; they take this
as a recommendation. It has not been done. The AOS study was a
sub-regional desktop study. It made a number of assumptions. It
did not do a socio-economic impact assessment for Kirksanton and,
you must remember, this is a site-specific document; this is what
you are putting forward to the country. The other part of that
interface with the planning, and you can look at other aspects
but the other part I have looked at is the SSA exclusionary aspect.
It says that you can move people to five kilometres outside the
secondary exclusion zone, and that is no problem. The problem
with the actual place where I live, which is Millom, is that it
is the only substantial community in 100km2. Technically, yes,
you can move these people to a safe zone, but after that there
is nowhere to go; there is only one road. I say that because talking
to the DECC staff, people did consider maybe it could have been
put in at an earlier stage, but I do not think anyone actually
considered the nature of a Greenfield site. There is another problem
with the interface of the compulsory purchase and its relationship
with the Human Rights Act. I can come to that later.
Q528 Dr Whitehead:
I am going to have to ask you Mr Mohamed—this is a ten-minute
joint presentation—if you could conclude your remarks.
Ms Preston: In conclusion, you
asked about guidance to the IPC from the NPS. Certainly the residents
of Kirksanton would say it is a not-fit-for-purpose document at
this time. Thank you very much.
Q529 Dr Whitehead:
Ms Hawkes, before you start, I ought to warn the Committee that
I believe a vote is reasonably imminent. If we are interrupted
by a vote, I am afraid we will have to suspend proceedings for
15 minutes while that takes place.
Ms Hawkes: I am a pensioner. I
was intending to retire to Braystones and we have bought a bungalow
on Braystones' beach. With all of this we are now questioning
whether that was a very sensible move. I believe that public consultation
relating to energy and climate change (and this is true of all
of the people who have spoken so far) has been very badly handled
by government at a departmental and local level. People from Braystones
have not been allowed to participate fully at all levels from
early on and throughout the process, they have not been invited
to take part in any meaningful or realistic examination of the
evidence to date or been able to influence any of the early decision-making,
nor has there been any feedback to the Braystones community about
if, or how, the concerns of the people of West Cumbria have been
taken into consideration. The consultation process around the
NPSs and the justification process do not comply with any of the
Government's own seven consultation criteria set out in the revised
code of practice July 2008. How can ordinary local people even
begin to understand the enormity and importance of all of this
without telling them what is going on? Therefore, we believe that
the consultation process on the NPSs is completely inadequate
and our rights to be heard have been denied. There are many evidence-based
examples in our submission, which I assume you have all read,
but with only ten minutes available we have had to choose just
a couple of key points. The total lack of publicity and public
engagement around the NPSs nationally follows the pattern by this
Government of not involving the public in many of the significant
decisions around climate change. There has been no national public
debate. For example, the UK Government is already in breach of
the Rio de Janeiro agreement signed in 1992. The public were not
involved in that decision, nor have they been consulted on decisions
around carbon dating. We also have grave concerns about the impartiality
of the Department and of the Secretary of State. Mr Miliband has
repeatedly declared his pro-nuclear stance. He has also made himself
the final authority in the justification of new nuclear power
stations, even though he has regularly voiced his support for
building new nuclear power stations. Where is the independence
and neutrality? Is Mr Miliband compromised? There has been a complete
lack of public involvement and transparency. These are key factors
in the whole nature of this engagement process, particularly at
local level. It has been suggested that the national and local
decisions have already been made behind closed doors, and this
seems to be confirmed by announcements made by the Government,
the Minister and our local MP in favour of nuclear expansion.
Mr Reed is the MP concerned, and he assured us at the public meetings
in Whitehaven in March 2009 that neither he nor any local politicians
have been aware of Braystones or the Kirksanton site being put
forward as possible sites for a nuclear expansion programme until
just after Christmas 2008, and yet he was the major author of
the energy coast proposals which had been developed over the two
previous years. Over the last ten months we have heard county
councillors, local councillors and the local MP telling everyone
that the vast majority of the public of West Cumbria are in favour
of the proposals. In a debate last June Mr Reed told the House
that he had to declare several thousand interests, the inference
being that they were all in favour. At meetings last year in Whitehaven
and Beckermet, which are local to Braystones, there were vociferous
objections to the plans, but these views were not acknowledged.
In this matter we consider Mr Reed has deliberately misled the
House and misrepresented local views. In November 2009 Mr Reed
appeared on Radio Cumbria and made unequivocal statements that
there would be no developments at Braystones or Kirksanton, and
he categorically stated over again that there would only be one
development and that would be at Sellafield. That was in 2009.
There has been no legitimate active or effective engagement with
the local community in Braystones about NPSs or the justification
process, including the siting applications. Local people have
not been given access to the evidence of need by which Braystones
was nominated in the strategic siting assessment process. We have
not been able to examine or challenge government data or been
given the opportunity to assess these proposals in public forums
or to raise any other matters.
Dr Whitehead: We will have to suspend
our sitting now for 15 minutes, assuming there is one vote. Of
course I will provide you with injury time for the rest of your
statement when we resume.
The Committee suspended at 4.13pm to 4.28pm
for a division in the House
Q530 Dr Whitehead:
Ms Hawkes, it sounds a little bit like Just a Minute, I
know, but you were on five minutes when we broke for the vote.
Ms Hawkes: I do
not think so; I was only on my first page. Anyway, as I said,
we have grave concerns about the impartiality of the Secretary
of State. I was in the process of talking about the lack of public
involvement and transparency that Mr Reed had over the period
between when we heard about this and at other times had deliberately,
we feel, misled the House and misrepresented local views. In November
Mr Reed had appeared on Radio Cumbria and made unequivocal statements
that there would be no development of Braystones or Kirksanton
and he categorically stated that there would only be a development
at Sellafield. We feel that there has been no legitimate active
or effective management with the local community in Braystones
about the NPS or the justification process, including the Nuclear
Industry Association applications. Local people have not been
given access to the evidence of need by which Braystones was determined
as one of those sites and we have not been able to challenge any
of the Government data; nor have we been able to raise any other
matters which we believe are relevant, such as the prohibitive
costs or safety matters. It appears that decisions about these
sites were based on market-based evidence from energy producers
and suppliers rather than on the needs of the country or local
areas. The news that Braystones had been listed as a possible
site for nuclear reactors came out of the blue and was a complete
shock to us. There was no public engagement of Braystones at all.
We never got any letters from RWE and we only found out about
it through the local media. We had exactly ten days to make comments
about the site, and by the time we got to that meeting we found
that RWE had already purchased an option to buy the necessary
farmland and had already undertaken exploratory drilling on the
farms. The National Policy Framework statement and the Regulatory
Justification Consultations are not inclusive. The key issues
of health, nuclear emissions and waste disposal and the environment
cannot be raised by the public. Why not? Why are all the local
meetings prefaced by those? We are told that nuclear is here to
stay and matters such as health, the environment and disposal
of nuclear waste are not up for debate. That was said at the beginning
of several of the meetings we attended. What account of the health
detriments is to be taken into account in this inquiry? We note
that this is the only NPS planning process where there will be
no legal requirement to undertake a full health impact assessment.
Who agreed to this? Where was our view taken into account there?
I wrote on 2 December to Professor John Ashton, who is the Director
of Public Health at NHS Cumbria, asking for his response to this
process. He wrote back to me. Yesterday I got a reply. Although
he knew I was coming here, I did not get it until yesterday. He
said, "Your questions are very wide-ranging and go beyond
specific technical issues to the whole question of the impact
of nuclear installations. In order to fully respond it will be
necessary to be able to refer to an integrated impact assessment
which took account of both externalities and the impact into the
future of a social, including health, economic and environmental
kind. I have no knowledge of such an assessment being carried
out; therefore, I cannot answer your questions." I want to
know why that has not happened. We have heard about COMARE not
reporting until after the consultation. I believe now that this
consultation process is a total failure and falls far short of
the Government's own statements on public engagement. The short
duration of the consultation on one of the most significant and
complex planning decisions to be made this century renders the
whole approach unacceptable and open to legal challenge. The process
has already had a massive impact on the mental health and wellbeing
of our local community and all the families involved. It has blighted
Braystones, a beautiful place. The value of our properties is
negligible and the probable destruction of our environment and
local beach is heartbreaking. The Government has not taken into
account the impact of proposing to build a nuclear reactor on
a greenfield site. Article 6 of the Human Rights Act states: "In
determination of his civil rights and obligations, everyone is
entitled to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time
by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law."
Your process is not a democratic process; the people of Braystones
have not been asked what they think; the process has been rushed;
it is not transparent. Therefore, this NPS process is not legitimate
and we believe all of these issues will need to be tested through
an independent public inquiry.
Dr Whitehead: Thank you very much. Do
committee members have any questions to our witnesses?
Q531 Charles Hendry:
In relation to the development of the potential Greenfield site
in particular, is it your view that that section of the NPS should
be removed, or are you seeking for the whole of the NPS to be
removed?
Ms Hawkes: I was asked to talk
about public engagement and consultation. I believe that there
has not been any true public engagement with the NPSs. I believe
that the Greenfield sites are a particular issue because they
are different from the brownfield sites. I believe everybody is
entitled, whether they are living near brownfield sites or greenfield
sites, to take part in this wider debate, but I really do firmly
believe that the problems in relation to the way that this has
all been developed means that we have had no voice, and that is
why I believe firmly that this process is a nonsense.
Q532 Charles Hendry:
Is that your view as well?
Mr Mohamed: What was the question
again?
Q533 Charles Hendry:
Is your concern about the inclusion of sites which are greenfield
sites, primarily, and you would like that removed from the NPS,
or is it that you believe the whole of the NPS process is flawed?
Mr Mohamed: I am not clever enough
to know the whole process. I understand and know what has happened
to me and my community, and that is what I have looked at and
that is what I have prepared for here. In relation to that, yes,
because there are a number of differential aspects. We and Braystones
could never have been part of the early part of the process because
no-one was looking for us—we were only nominated in March
2009—and it is a problem.
Q534 Charles Hendry:
Do you have a sense of the number of your community who you are
speaking for? How many members do you have in your organisation
out of the total population?
Ms Hawkes: We are not an organisation,
we are a little hamlet, and we have come together at meetings
where there has been 100 per cent voicing against this. Can you
imagine: there are a lot of quite elderly people who do not have
access to computers; you have to go and talk to them. They are
very worried; they are very upset; they do not want this. This
is our beach. I know you probably cannot see it, but it is a beautiful
place. We live on the beach; we have got houses on the beach.
The hamlet has got about 35 houses in it: there are about 30 properties
on the beach and then there is farmland. It is not an organisation;
we are a small community.
Ms Preston: All of the residents
in Kirksanton, which is 100 of us, are against the nomination,
and also we set up a public meeting and 350 people turned up,
which would then include residents from both Haverigg and Silecroft,
but we are certainly not an organisation.
Ms Birkby: Could I make a point
on that, that is Radiation Free Lakeland. We went to Coniston
and handed out leaflets and got people to write to the Tourist
Board, for instance, and ask their views on this, and everybody
that we spoke to (and it was round about 200 people), all of them,
apart from one person who was a nuclear physicist, said they were
completely opposed to any new build in Cumbria. If you go to the
top of Coniston Old Man, you cannot see any wind turbines, but
what you can see is Heysham on one side and Sellafield on the
other, and the visual expansion is going to be a blot on the landscape,
but with nuclear power it is not the visual that is the problem.
Q535 Dr Whitehead:
I wonder, Mr Mohamed, whether you could expand briefly on the
point you made concerning the incorporation of greenfield sites
into a document which is spatially specific which, you suggested,
therefore enables an applicant to jump over one stage of the planning
process and effectively have a site which apparently is designated
for that purpose, which would not normally happen under the planning
regulations as they stand at the moment? Is that your understanding
of what is taking place?
Mr Mohamed: It is my understanding
that the Planning Act had banned that process, yes.
Q536 Dr Whitehead:
Is that your understanding as far as your site is concerned, Ms
Hawkes?
Ms Hawkes: Yes.
Q537 Dr Whitehead:
These are sites which have had, as it were, pre-purchases placed
on them.
Ms Hawkes: They have already bought
the land now.
Mr Mohamed: No, they had options.
They had not purchased it; they had options to buy the land.
Ms Hawkes: They had options to
purchase the land prior to the meetings, prior to the announcements,
but since then, I do not know about Kirksanton but at Braystones
they have actually brought three farms now.
Q538 Dr Whitehead:
Your suggestion is that they bought the land first—
Ms Hawkes: Yes, or had options
to buy.
Q539 Dr Whitehead:
—when there was, as far as you understood, an assurance
that these sites would not be placed within the NPS designated
agreed sites?
Ms Hawkes: Who knows?
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