Together against Sizewell C (TASC) condemns the Chancellor’s ‘Growth Plan 2022’, dismissing it as an altar upon which democratic scrutiny will be sacrificed and a developer’s charter which rides roughshod over the rights of a community to defend their local environment.
The ‘Growth Plan’ is designed to ‘promote growth whilst ensuring environmental outcomes are protected’, according to the document released today, while claiming that the period taken for the consenting of development consent orders has increased by 65% since 2012. Incredibly, the Plan also seeks to accelerate ‘as fast as possible’ infrastructure projects, including Sizewell C, and aims to ‘get the vast majority starting construction by the end of 2023.’
TASC point out that such ambition in the case of Sizewell C is clearly designed to show that the government is prepared to light a bonfire of regulation to boost the confidence of investors following the recent £700m nuclear giveaway Boris Johnson announced in the dog-days of his shambolic premiership. Furthermore, Sizewell C faces many significant hurdles before it can even begin to be considered as a ‘done deal’, not the least of which are environmental permits it currently lacks, a nuclear site licence, the resolution of the acoustic fish deterrent issue, a TASC-led judicial review of the Secretary of State’s approval of the development consent order and the securing of a potable water for the entire 60 year operational period of the plant, should it ever get permission to operate.
TASC Chairman, Pete Wilkinson, said, ‘This paper is an attempt by the new Prime Minister to show how tough she is going to be in promoting economic growth in the UK at the expense of the innate rights of people to scrutinise plans and hold developers to account in a timely and forensic manner. In the case of EDF and Sizewell C, the process would have allowed many more huge inconsistencies and errors in their development plans to have gone unchecked and unaddressed. Growth is itself a questionable concept: growth at the expense of democratic examination is a retrograde step which is indicative of where this government sees its self-interest – in the developers, in the corporates and in those seeking a quick approval process for developments which could seriously damage, disrupt and divide communities.
‘TASC will do everything in its power to ensure that Mr Kwarteng’s ambitions are challenged TASC believe that the courts have good reason to give us leave to take our case forward and hope that the regulatory bodies will do the right thing for people and the environment and throw the Sizewell C project out by refusing to licence this monstrous and unnecessary development which is neither an example of growth nor a realistic attempt to deal with the cost of living or energy crises.’
