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The DCO examination ended two days after several hundred documents were submitted at Deadline 10 by EDF and a variety of Interested Parties.
As a result, no one has really had a chance to submit any comments on those submissions, some of which had been requested much earlier during the examination. It will probably be the case that once the Secretary of State recieves the examination report from the Planning Inspectorate, he will request formal responses from a number of specific statutory authorities, NGOs and interested parties concerning the Deadline 10 submissions.
Along with Theberton and Eastbridge and Middleton cum Fordley Parish Councils, Stop Sizewell C and B1122 Action Group, we decided to submit a joint summary document to the Planning Inspectorate containing our unanswered concerns with the DCO application for Sizewell C along with some comments specifically about Deadline 10 submissions. This will be sent to the Secretary of State along with the Planning Inspectors Report and recommendations.
When that report was being written, it came to our attention that EDF had submitted two planning applications to East Suffolk Council in support of conducting Ground Anchor and Soil Mixing geotechnical trials on the area where the Sizewell C platform will be. The first application was a request for a Scoping Report Opinion which determined that no Environmental Impact Assessment was needed and the second was for the actual geotechnical trials activities.
It is surprising that no Environmental Impact Assessment was deemed to be required and even more surprising that there were no comments on the application from the Environment Agency, Natural England, Inland Drainage Board or any of the nature based NGOs considering the proximity to Sizewell Marsh SSSI and Minsmere SSSI. The only commenters were the County Council Archeological Service and the Fire and Rescue Service. The East Suffolk decsion document for the Scoping Opinion also heavily featured cut-and-paste statements from EDF's application which doesn't give a feeling of confidence that the application was critically assessed.
So whilst we did refer to these applications in the summary a more detailed analysis and response has also been sent to the Planning Inspectorate for forwarding on to the Secretary of State. The same information has also been formatted as an objection to the currently open planning application at East Suffolk on behalf of MLSG, Theberton and Eastbridge Parish Council and Stop Sizewell C and has been used by Theberton and Eastbridge Parish Council as the basis of a request that both of these applications be called in by the Secretary of State for Levelling up, Housing and Communities.
The two documents sent to PINS for forwarding to the Secretary of State are available at the links to the left.