Barry Turner, Chairman of Oldbury Parish Council, suggests we may be off DECCs list!

Hope for campaigners as new talks on power station in Oldbury are planned



CAMPAIGNERS against plans for a new nuclear power station in Oldbury claim they have been given renewed hope the project might not go ahead.

People living in Oldbury, and nearby Shepperdine, have said a second round of consultation announced by the new coalition government could mean proposals for another power plant near their homes are thrown out.

Reg Illingworth, chairman of the residents' group Shepperdine Against Nuclear Energy (SANE), said: "SANE believes that the new government will understand that the Shepperdine site is totally inadequate for the size of development proposed and are more likely to exclude it from the, so say suitable sites."

Barry Turner, chairman of Oldbury Parish Council, said: "This is not what we were expecting. We thought we'd made our submissions but it seems they are starting the process again.

"It's difficult to know what they are doing, but it may be that Oldbury isn't on the list anymore and that in the autumn there might be a new list, a new approach by a new government."

Local people have campaigned for months against another power station being built. Their main concerns were the need for cooling towers and the lack of a national repository for nuclear waste and flooding.

The Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) announced last week that it plans to re-consult on the previous government's National Policy Statements (NPSs) for energy, including the one for nuclear energy, which named Oldbury as a preferred site for a new power station.

DECC said despite already consulting on the document, it needed to look again at the Appraisals of Sustainability, which assess the environmental, social and economic impacts.

The government department also said the re-consultation would allow the public to look at changes that have been made to the NPSs, however it would not say what those changes were.

In February more than 200 people turned out for a public meeting in Thornbury held by DECC about plans to build a power station in the area.

Horizon, the energy company that has bought land at Oldbury and Shepperdine in anticipation of the area being chosen, said it was optimistic about the re-consultation.

Leon Flexman, spokesman for Horizon, said: "Delay to the National Policy Statement designation is disappointing, but we welcome the intention to deliver NPSs that are robust and subject to proper scrutiny and consultation. This is in everyone's interests."

DECC is expected to launch the new consultation in the autumn.