APPEAL LOST

Saturday 7th January - About 150 residents from King's Cliffe and surrounding villages met in the centre of King's Cliffe in a protest against the announcement by Augean that it had begun to dump LLW in spite of the on-going legal challenge. Led by a drummer and a pantomime horse, local people joined in a walk around the village before dispersing. The protest was intended to show the company and the planning authorities that the issue is still vey much alive in the minds of local people.

On Tuesday 29th November, the Court of Appeal gave leave for an appeal to be heard in the case brought by a King’s Cliffe resident against the Secretary of State over the dumping of LLW at the King’s Cliffe site. Augean, which had until then agreed to withhold dumping until the legal process had been completed, ignored requests to continue this policy and announced that it would go ahead and start disposing of LLW notwithstanding. Augean argued that it could always dig the waste up again if the ruling went against it.

Unimpressed by this unlikely scenario, and In order to prevent a possible infringement from taking place, residents of King’s Cliffe and surrounding villages decided to mount a blockade of the site. This took place on Friday 2nd December.

About 25 residents arrived at the site at 5.30am, before the gates opened, and set themselves up in the entrance. In order to delay the passage of lorries bringing LLW for as long as possible, four residents clipped themselves into steel tubes inserted in barrels of concrete. Great care was taken to ensure that traffic along the road was alerted, and no mishaps took place. The police were called in by Augean about two hours later and there was a good-humoured and entirely peaceful stand-off before a specialist team could arrive with equipment to ‘free’ those who were clipped on. The last residents were extracted at about 1pm, leaving a small group to continue the protest by the roadside. Reporters and film crews were present throughout. Six residents who had ignored police instructions to move were arrested, and later released. It is not known whether any LLW was brought to the site in the afternoon.

For press release, click here

Below is a selection of posters for you to print off and display to show your backing for our campaign.

(As you cannot copy these pictures direct, the best way to grab them is click on one to enlarge it, then press the 'control 'and 'print screen' buttons on your keyboard simultaneously. Open a Word or Powerpoint document and 'paste' in the image. Then use your cropping tool to get rid of the unwanted stuff around the edges, and expand the poster to full size. Then print.)

Alternatively, contact us via this site and we will email you a JPEG.

Thank you for your support.

November 3rd 2011 - A High Court judge has dismissed the challenge by a King's Cliffe resident against Comunities Secretary, Eric Pickles. Mr Pickles had previously overturned the decision by Northamptonshire County Council to refuse permission for the disposal of nuclear waste in the local landfill.
However the judge did grant an injunction against Augean, preventing the company from disposing of LLW for another four weeks while residents decided on whether to seek an appeal.
So far as we know, no nuclear waste has yet been buried in the landfill.

Next month Augean will present its applications to the Infrastructure Planing Commission for extensions to its permit until 2016, and then 2026, together with opening up more void space at the site. Given the lack of applications coming forward from other sites to take this material, villagers are concerned that this will confirm King's Cliffe as the national waste site for these levels of LLW, and that waste could even be brought from as far away as Sellafield, the main producer of LLW, a distance of over 250 miles.

We have just been informed that the Secretary of State has ruled in favour of the appeal and has overturned the decision by Northamptonshire County Council to oppose the disposal of nuclear waste in the King's Cliffe landfill.

Wastewatchers do not wish to comment in detail on this ruling until we have had time to properly consider it.

Our initial reaction, however, is one of surprise and disappointment that the wishes of local people appear to have been ignored, especially by a Secretary of State who has firmly declared his support for local democratic decision-making. In overturning the decision of the County Council, and the wishes of all local government organs, he has hardly demonstrated the level of commitment expected from one who is trying to steer a Localism Bill through Parliament.

We are also surprised that the government should consider the forcible disposal of nuclear waste in an area so evidently unprepared for it a positive approach to dealing with the decommissioning of nuclear facilities. When the Government’s own strategy puts ‘public acceptability’ as the first principle to be followed in deciding locations for disposal, it seems that words count for nothing.

King’s Cliffe will now be, ipso facto, the national nuclear low level waste site for the South of England and the Midlands, even though it lies 90 miles from the nearest site. That does not seem to us to be either a fair or a sensible solution.

Wastewatchers will comment further on the decision at a later date, and will consider what options are available to us to challenge it.

For the full text of the Secretary of State's ruling, and the Inspector's report, click here.

This is the day on which Mr Pickles wil announce whether King's Cliffe is to become the national nuclear waste dump for LLW for the South of England and the Midlands.

If he approves, it will be the first time that nuclear waste will have been deposited in a site distant from any nuclear facility, and it may open the way for such sites to spring up in other places.

It wlll also cast an interesting perspective on Mr Pickles' Localism Bill. We have followed his advice, at considerable expense, by calling referendums to make the views of local people on planning decisions known, and these views have been endorsed by all organs of local government in the area.

We are confident that Mr Pickles is a man of integrity who will not perform a sudden and shoddy u-turn, and that on Tuesday he will rule that King's Cliffe is not an appropriate location for such material.

We feel justified in this belief by Mr Pickles' statement that:
"I am very concerned planning decisions made by our locally elected representatives being overturned by the Government’s Planning Inspector. ...[In one example] the Inspector said that the Council’s reason for refusal was not substantial as it was based on local residents’ opposition. Forgive me, but is this not the most robust of arguments? Shouldn’t local people be able to make local decisions through their locally elected representatives?

Years of campaigning by local folk is ignored as a stranger visits town, probably never to return and his decision can leave peoples’ quality of life and local landscape ruined by an unwanted development."