WORRY that local people will be left to pick up the bill for vital scrutiny of plans for a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point have led Sedgemoor District Council to delay setting its annual Council Tax.

The authority estimates around £2 million will be needed to cover the costs incurred by it, West Somerset Council and Somerset County Council in scrutinising the application from EDF Energy - the company behind the proposed Hinkley C development - to the Infrastructure Planning Commission.

The French energy giant has submitted its development consent order to the IPC, which will be responsible for examining it.

All three councils have continued to accuse EDF of not going far enough with its plans to mitigate the impact of the £10 billion development.

But Sedgemoor District Council said this week that scrutiny of the EDF application was fundamental to ensure that the interests of residents who will bear the impacts of the development were fairly and properly represented - part of a legal requirement of the formal consent procedure.

However, a spokesman said the authority was adamant that local Council Tax-payers' money should not be used to carry out the work as the project was of national benefit and importance and was being built by a commercial profit-making company.

The council has adjourned any decision on Council Tax levels for the coming financial year until next Friday (February 24) because it says it has very real concerns about its ability to carry out the scrutiny work.

"It is estimated that very large sums of money will be needed to carry out this work and the council is not willing to set its Council Tax without this amount being agreed upon," said the spokesman.

"EDF has previously funded this work but has not confirmed so far the amount for the next stage, despite ongoing negotiations with the councils over the matter."

The council said the money was needed for researching, producing evidence and presenting arguments for the various issues local communities have said are important to them, such as housing, transport, community safety, leisure and the environment.

Council leader Cllr Duncan McGinty said it was entirely improper that scarce public money should be used to fund the development process relating to a privately owned commercial asset of a company expected to shortly reveal profits running into several billion pounds.

"The IPC will be expecting to see properly researched evidence from the councils as to information contained in EDF's application and we are not prepared to pay for this from local tax," said Cllr McGinty.

But EDF hit back by saying it had voluntarily provided more than £13m to the three councils over the past two and a half years to allow the authorities and their consultants to scrutinise the proposals for Hinkley C.

"Of this total, £9.8m has been received by Sedgemoor District Council," said a spokesman.

"This has ensured that council budgets have not been affected by the Hinkley C project."

The spokesman said the company was also voluntarily committing to continue to fund the "reasonable costs" incurred by the local authorities during the IPC process and this commitment had been reiterated to Sedgemoor this week.

"As a result, the councils will have funding from us to carry out reasonable work as part of this process, without need to impact council budgets."

The spokesman said EDF had a duty to its customers to keep bills to a minimum and so could not fund work beyond what was reasonably required of the councils in the IPC process.

And, in addition to and separate from its financial support for the councils' assessment of its application, the company was also proposing hundreds of millions of pounds of investment to mitigate the impact of the project.

"Approximately £30m has already been committed," said the spokesman.

"Our project will bring substantial economic benefit to the area, including £100m per year at peak construction and £40m per year during operation."

A spokesman for West Somerset Council said the authority was aware of Sedgemoor's course of action regarding deferral of its Council Tax setting.

But she said it was not something it was considering in response to the issues raised.

"We have pledged that our community will not have to pay towards the costs of the proposed development and we remain committed to continuing to work with all partners, including local authorities, EDF, the Government and its agencies, to explain our resources requirements to fulfil the role that the Government and our communities expect us to."