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15/12/03 - West Cumbria Taskforce Welcomed

Councillor Rex Toft, Leader of Cumbria County Council, today welcomed the Government announcement that a strategic task force will be created to help in the regeneration of West Cumbria during and after the creation of the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency.

The announcement came in a statement to the House of Commons today by Patricia Hewitt, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and Cabinet Minister responsible for science and technology.

Ms Hewitt said that the strategic taskforce would deal with long-term economic and social issues and would look at all issues, from infrastructure to education and social regeneration. The taskforce would  be led by the North West Development Agency and would be formed around the existing regeneration agencies, including the Urban Regeneration Company (West Lakes Renaissance), and the Rural Regeneration Company, both of which would continue to deliver funding.

Councillor Toft said: 

“We welcome the creation of a strategic taskforce for West Cumbria in the wake of nuclear decommissioning. The Government has at last recognised that there is a need for long-term and comprehensive support for regeneration in social as well as economic terms.

  “It is essential that the Government embeds in the Energy Bill currently before Parliament a commitment to  making that support permanent. The Nuclear Decommissioning Agency must be given powers to deliver it for the foreseeable future. This is one of the lessons learned by the fact-finding team I led which investigated the nuclear decommissioning process in the USA. We found that a marked reduction in initial funding for regeneration had resulted in adverse effects on agreed programmes in a number of US states. That is a mistake we must avoid in West Cumbria.”

The Government also announced today the outcome of a review of BNFL’s future.

Mr Toft said: 

“This is of absolutely fundamental importance and we need to study in detail what the proposals are. We shall be working with Allerdale and Copeland District Councils and within our own Nuclear Decommissioning Working Group to investigate the impact of these proposals on the economic future of West Cumbria.”