Real local choice

Annabelle Lillycrop is one of our Community Engagement Managers. She acts as a key point of contact for communities wishing to find out more about the possibility of hosting a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF).

Annabelle has significant public and stakeholder engagement and partnership development experience and knowledge in the environmental and nuclear sectors, and previously worked with the environmental regulator, the Environment Agency, where she led nationally on engagement for the Nuclear Regulatory Group.

Annabelle does not live far from the Hinkley Point power station, and knows what life is like in a community that hosts a major nuclear facility. In her new blog, she introduces the unique community consent-based process to find a suitable location for a GDF.

The process is designed to make sure any interested community can make a fully informed decision about hosting a GDF.

Annabelle writes:

Any community that gets involved will naturally have lots of questions and may have concerns. It’ll be my responsibility, and my colleagues’, to make sure we provide satisfactory answers. There’s no off-the-shelf way to do this; it all depends on what your community needs and is comfortable with. We might organise public exhibitions and meetings, we’ll set up a website, and post information on social media, for example.

We’ll keep working with your community until people feel that they can make an informed decision about hosting a GDF. It might take a long time to reach this point, and that’s all right. This is a long-term project, and informed consent is more important than a quick decision.

Read the blog in full here.