EDF workers living in village accommodation around Hinkley Point are a major health risk to residents and should be moved out to purpose-built campuses which have strict health precautions, local councillors urged this week.

Despite a decision by EDF on Wednesday to reduce its Hinkley C workforce by half to around 2,000 in the coming days in an attempt to limit the spread of the coronavirus, it was claimed that while residents were in lockdown, HPC construction workers could “come and go as they wish”.

“People are very scared and concerned,” said Cllr Chris Morgan, chairman of Stogursey Parish Council and the area’s councillor on Somerset West and Taunton Council. “What is happening is a recipe for disaster.”

Cllr Morgan said that, while he welcomed the reduction in the Hinkley workforce, “you have still got a very large group of people doing what everyone else has been told not to do.

“We have a large multiple occupation building (HMO) in the middle of the village, another in Castle Street, one in Burton and many rented rooms, all full of people going to work, coming back, using the shops, all mixing together.

“When you have a predominantly older age group it is a recipe for disaster.

“Most of the villages around Hinkley Point have quarantined themselves but when you have got people constantly doing the complete opposite of that being asked of the people who live here, it just doesn’t seem right.

“The answer could be to move workers out of the villages back to purpose-built campuses. It’s not beyond the capabilities of EDF to do that. This is a national emergency.”

Parish council vice-chairman Cllr Sue Goss said that, while she also welcomed the cut in the Hinkley workforce, it did not go far enough to address the needs of the local community.

“Our main concern, particularly in Stogursey parish, is that we still have contractors who quite rightly go home at the weekends, some to the Covid 19 hotspots of South Wales and the West Midlands, and then return to the middle of our local community, totally untested, before they return to the site.

“We are in discussion with EDF and the local councils to see what other measures can be taken, but at the moment it seems that the only real control over the situation would be to shut the site down, which I don’t think will happen because it is a critical national infrastructure project.”

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