Millom Without Parish Council

19th April 21

Dear Chris and Andy,

Re: Feedback Issues and Calc Position Statement

1. Workstream 2 – Siting Process

We were pleased (reference email dated 30th March 21) to note that CDALC are now included in Work-Stream 2. Could you please provide an update on how this work is progressing? And who is covering this scope of work from CDALC?

2. Resident Public Meetings

As you are aware this Parish Council held two Public On-line Meetings in March 21. In total we had 25 local residents who took the time to join us and set their thoughts and feelings on the siting of a GDF at Ghyll Scaur Quarry. The key themes and issues can be summarised:

•Lack of Local Support – this was pretty well a unanimous position of the residents, who were keen to express some strong emotions as to how the site was nominated.

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•No Transparency – The issue of site nomination process consumed a significant amount of the meeting time. Most residents expressing the lack of openness and transparency on such a significant project and the consequential life-changing impact for many generations within our local communities.

•Community Engagement – the concept of a “willing community” was seen as lacking credibility in light of the early siting nomination. Residents felt an immediate loss of trust in the way the front-end process had been managed, which has meant a significant dis-trust of the communications being put forward by RWM and the Copeland Working Group

•Poor communications – some residents spoke of there attempts to correspond with RWM, using the email via the Head Office in the early set up of the GDF communications process and getting no response. Others had made contact via the new arrangements as per the Copeland Working Group and receiving a response which was more of a “template”, without addressing their issues.

Post - Residents Meeting – the Parish Council encouraged residents to write again to the Working Group and ask specific questions – to date those residents have again reported what appears to be template answers with no attempt to get to the heart of the question or more importantly “make it a personal response and build some bridges”.

To date we have had feedback that residents feel let-down, with what appears to be a top-down communications process without any significant attempts to build relationships at the local level.

3. CDALC Position Statement

Please note the following comments / concerns which I hope CDCALC will address prior to any submission to RWM?

CDALC Principles

Comments / Concerns

1.CDALC supports, in principle, the consent-based approach of working in partnership in an open and transparent way with communities and welcome the

•Does this principle endorse the approach of the random site nomination process?

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We also noted that this position statement relates to Copeland and can we clarify whether CALC have endorsed the position statement?

4. Webinar Feedback

A number of our Parish Councillors attended the Webinar’s and will be in touch to send their individual views on the experience.

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We would welcome further dialogue and engagement on the current progress within the GDF Working Groups. We need to maintain a more regular set of conversations on the progress of the Independent Working Group. We would welcome your views?

Yours sincerely,

David Savage

Chair – Millom Without Parish Council

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