Description

CSEC researchers and colleagues within Geography, Cesagen, and Nuclear Waste Advisory Associates submitted their response to thegovernment's public consultation on the draft National Policy Statements for Energy Infrastructure in February 2010.

Noel Cass, Tom Roberts, Bronislaw Szerszynski, Claire Waterton, Brian Wynne andRachel Western entitled their contribution "Ensuring publics continue to 'have a say'", an ironic title given the increasingly limited opportunity for publics to say what they feel about energy infrastructure in the UK.

Referring specifically to nuclear new-build, CSEC researchersand colleaguessuggest that the process of national consultation closes down and prevents (rather than opens out, as it should do) consideration of many important issues relating to nuclear new build. This is due, in part, to the structure of both the consultation processes and the NPS-Infrastructure Planning Commission (hereafter IPC) decision-making framework. It is also due, in part, to issues of timing relating again to both the consultation processes and the NPS-IPC decision making framework.

CSEC researchersand colleaguesdeclareda lack of confidence in the processes for public participation within NPS/Infrastructure Planning Commission-based decision making.

The full response can be found here, and is listed in'CSEC Reports':

CSEC (2010) Ensuring publics continue to 'have a say': submission to the public consultation on the draft National Policy Statements for Energy Infrastructure, Lancaster: CSEC, Lancaster University.