Note for the record
WCSSG meeting held at Cleator Moor Civic and Masonic Centre
Tuesday 1 August 2017
Present:
John Tear - Trade Union
Felicity Wilson - Copeland Borough Council
Paul Turner - Cumbria County Council
Bob Jones - Ponsonby Parish Council
Steve Nicholson - Prospect
Peter Clements - Prospect
Lynsay Hernandez - Civil Nuclear Constabulary
Adrian Davis-Johnston - National Nuclear Laboratory
Trudy Harrison - MP for Copeland
Peter Welch - Nuclear Decommissioning Authority
Phil Edge - Nuclear Decommissioning Authority
Paul Vallance - Nuclear Decommissioning Authority
David Peattie - Nuclear Decommissioning Authority
Mark Gabbott - ONR
Rob Allott - Environment Agency
Rosina Robinson - Secretary
David Moore - Chairman – Seascale Parish Council Rep
Mike Starkie - Copeland Borough Council
Dennis Thompson - LLWR
Paul Foster - Sellafield Ltd
Phil Hallington - Sellafield Ltd
Shirley Fawcett - Sellafield Ltd
Frank Morgan - Cumbria County Council
Lena Hogg - Copeland Borough Council
David Southward - Cumbria County Council
Paul McKenna - Isle of Man Government
Douglas Sim - St Bees Parish Council
Alan Smith - Allerdale Borough Council
Mark Nicholson - Cumbria Fire and Rescue
Observers
Brian Hough - Nuclear Decommissioning Authority
Abi Lockwood - Nuclear Decommissioning Authority
Lucy Miller - Nuclear Decommissioning Authority
Ian Dallas - ONR
Neil Doggett - ONR
Martin Forwood - CORE
Nick Jeffery - Unite
Nick Barron - Copeland Borough Council
Cath Giel - LLWR
Apologies
Steve Jones - Chair, Environmental Health Working Group
Kevin Bethwaite - Fire and Rescue Service
Richard Griffin - Cumbria County Council
Peter Tyson - Trades Union Council
Lindsay Gray - Churches Forum
Graham Hutson - Gosforth Parish Council
Peter Manning - Beckermet Parish Council
Simon Walker - National Nuclear Laboratories
Keith Hitchen - Drigg and Carleton Parish Council
Note:
Copies of all the presentations and reports referred to in this document are available to view on the West Cumbria Sites Stakeholder Group website at www.wcssg.co.uk
Agenda item 1:
The Chairman welcomed members and observers to the meeting. He acknowledged the young people who had set up exhibitions to explain the community projects that they were working on. He congratulated Martin Forwood (CORE) for receiving the International Nuclear Free award for Education and he welcomed Trudy Harrison, the MP for Copeland who was attending her first meeting. Finally he welcomed the NDA Chief Executive who was also attending for the first time and asked him to address the group.
David Peattie:- Speech verbatim
It’s a real pleasure to be here with you for this important meeting. I’d like to make three quick points: I grew up in the North West of England in Blackpool and spent most of my holidays as a boy, a man and as a married man with kids in this part of the world. I worked for BP for 33 years in oil and gas, I’ve worked all over the world and I can confidently say this is my favourite corner of the UK.
I joined the NDA in March of this year so I know very little and I’m still very much learning as I go, but I’ve learnt enough already to know there are some fantastic people and fantastic technologies and communities that we work with.
Six years ago I bought a home near Holmrook and I’m delighted that what was initially a holiday home is now my permanent home, so I’m very much a local man as well.
Secondly just a comment about the NDA – I’m responsible for the 17 sites around the country which are all in various stages of clean up, and managing that legacy of the fantastic nuclear research, power and generation that this country has had over 70 years, it’s my job to lead the team that cleans up that legacy and also protects the future.
We generate £1b a year of income for the UK tax payer from international and local sources and we spend £3b per year again on behalf of the UK tax payer, the bulk of which is spent here in West Cumbria.
I’m accountable to parliament for the spend and activity around the site so Trudy is one of my 650 bosses and I take that responsibility very seriously indeed. I’ve managed to get around about a third of the sites and I hope to get around the rest of them over the coming months.
Finally a comment about partnerships, the NDA is all about partnerships either with members of our estates, such as Sellafield and LLWR. We also have partnerships internationally with our stakeholders, investors and customers whether that’s to develop technologies in Canada or to help Japan recover from its difficulties or whether it is selling the great expertise in the nuclear space that the UK has, so really important.
I want to emphasise and finish on this thought that the most important partnerships are with the communities where we work, live and operate. It’s only through working with those communities that we as the NDA have a social licence to operate and that’s something that’s very important to me and while I’m in charge of the NDA something that we’re going to give a huge amount of attention to.
Agenda Item 2 - Purdah
The Chairman explained the frustrations around the recent NDA decision to postpone WCSSG meetings and working group meetings due to the interpretation of the purdah guidelines. Bob Jones gave the background to the decision to create a WCSSG protocol to help inform any future decisions relevant to purdah. The protocol was approved by members of the WCSSG and will be formalised as part of the constitution.
Q: Martin Forwood: commented that one of the things that stood out in the protocol was that agenda items would be taken into account to see whether or not they conflict with the guidelines. He couldn’t see any agenda items that could possibly conflict with the guidelines. There had been three meetings cancelled nevertheless, the main group, two working group meetings and for him, the worse thing of all was the cancelling of a one to one meeting he had planned with Sellafield to discuss Thorp pond conversion to the storage pond.
He did not understand why that meeting had to be cancelled and asked what implications there were for government policy and conflicting views. He couldn’t see it and asked for an explanation?
A: Bob Jones: responded that the Enablers group had similar emotions when faced with the issue in June. From the point of view of the sub groups he agreed with Martin. From the point of view of the main group it is quite possible there could have been questions or discussions that started to infringe upon cabinet office guidelines about not getting into difficult discussions that could politicise the election process. The view of the group was that it could have been easily managed through the chairs, but the NDA’s view was that it wasn’t a position that they were prepared to put themselves or the operating sites in which caused some difficulty. He thought the new protocol would force all parties to look at each and every meeting and make sure that there is a way that the meeting can go ahead without causing the difficulties that were perceived but perhaps not real at that time.
Q: Martin Forwood: asked if that would apply to future one to one meetings such as the one he had planned and was postponed?
A: David Moore: replied that individual meetings aren’t part of the stakeholder group process it was Sellafield Ltds place to comment on that. He agreed with Bob that everyone had their frustrations but hoped the new protocol would help with future decisions. Although he probably would have supported Martin’s one to one meeting going ahead it wasn’t part of the stakeholder process.
Agenda item 3: Sellafield Ltd series of reports
Reports were given on Sellafield related activities as follows:
Sellafield Ltd - Paul Foster
NDA - Duncan Thompson
EA - Rob Allott
ONR - Mark Gabbott
Q: Alan Smith: Asked for an update in terms of the framework contracts. He had mentioned before that he felt local companies need to man up for ten years, not two years which makes it difficult for local employers?
A: Paul Foster: responded that Sellafield Ltd is doing two things; one is competing for longer periods of time supported by the NDA and also cascading down the government approved scoring regime to local suppliers. That is in place and the frameworks are rolling out, which should provide the ability for longer term contracts and to reflect local content.
He commented that the process is in its infancy, a couple of frameworks are due out, and there are some that Mr Foster was unable to discuss due to competition rules. He commented that the benefits are being seen in some of the improved scoring locally as a result of the socio economic local content value. There have been some successes and some that haven’t been successful.
He went on to explain that SL is also trying to create businesses and supply chain capability that currently doesn’t exist. SL is trying to do this in a variety of ways that are within competition law. This will also help create capability locally that can be exported from the region. What SL doesn’t want to do is create businesses that are solely dependent on SL it wants to be part of people’s portfolio, not all of it.
There have been some encouraging discussions and SL is working hard to try and turn some of those discussions into reality.
Frameworks have been changed in terms of longer contracts; local content has been included, local firms have been successful to some extent and others have not, SL will assess the situation further once there is a better understanding from the next frameworks to ascertain whether on balance things have improved or not.
Q: Alan Smith: Asked Mr Foster if he had looked at the memorandum of understanding that he had discussed at a previous WCSSG meeting a number of years ago. The document gave West Cumbria a proofing on national procurement policies. It had been suggested that the only requirement was a redesign of the date and wording at the start of the document to embellish West Cumbria manufacturers above the national competition.
A: Paul Foster: Responded that his understanding was it had been done through virtue of the improved local content put into the frameworks. He endeavoured to check the memorandum of understanding to see if it would have given any more than SL has already factored in. Candidly at the moment, local firms can be more expensive and win within boundaries as long as they hit the quality and that is all above board. Mr Foster added that SL is in advance discussions to try and source local produce to supply the SL workforce, he commented that it is a complicated process as there are a lot of distributors and suppliers, but SL is working to try and make it work.
Q: Bob Jones: Referred to the Sellafield Ltd report and the issue of asset management as a challenge. The EA report also raised asset management, both in terms of the conditions of some plant and equipment but also some organisational issues for asset management which they are talking to ONR about. The EA report also noted that during this period there has been a significant change in use in some buildings at Sellafield, namely the oxide ponds from essentially ponds that support reprocessing to ponds that support long term storage of AGR fuel. Clearly asset management will be a key issue to make sure a similar position isn’t reached in the future with some of the legacy ponds and silos areas as a result of asset management decisions that were taken decades ago.
A: Paul Foster: Replied that the asset management approach now is nearly seven years old, he commented that seven years ago there were utilities losses, there had been civil asset failures, there was uncertainty in reliability. In terms of embarking upon the biggest challenges to Sellafield now and in the future, SL now has a site overview of all the assets, there is an assets plan for nearly all the assets prioritised in terms of their risk and hazard. There have never been so many engineers to understand what assets are needed for and what they are capable of doing. There are still some problems, for example the ventilation system on some of the old facilities on the plutonium plants, so there is still work to do, however Mr Foster was confident in terms of asset management.
He continued that the ponds Mr Jones had referred to will be in use for another 70 years or so which is why SL has maintained the membership of WANO for the ponds even when reprocessing ends. The silos retrievals will also go into WANO who will provide valuable critical feedback.
Bob Jones: responded that it was reassuring to hear and was an important issue that SL needed to keep focused on.
Bob Jones: Bob referred to the ONR report where there had been two comments on HAL stocks that seemed to suggest a significant risk reduction stage had been reached. The HAL stocks have now got to levels where ONR felt it unnecessary to have license instruments to further force reductions in HAL stocks. Mr Jones thought that was really pleasing if that is the case. Secondly he referred to a comment in the ONR report dealing with steam generating plants where they believed the absence of steam in high level waste plants wasn’t an issue because the plant could go to a quiescent condition. In the past steam has been needed to maintain safety. He added that if those statements were correct then is was a very significant risk reduction step the group needed to understand a bit more. He suggested it could be discussed at the risk and hazard reduction and waste management working group. He did add however that the verbal reports on HAL stocks that SL and ONR gave slightly conflicted against that.