Who will end up paying for EDF’s mistakes?

EDF seems to need an extra 50 per cent lorry movements and has offered a £4 million mitigation package to ensure this.

Where will this money come from – perhaps directly from EDF’s profits or more likely it will be added to the bill that the British taxpayers and electricity customers will eventually have to pay.

Perhaps our local MP can ensure that local people do not have to pay to have increased traffic in their area.

There are two possible ways at looking at the problem. 

EDF are so badly organised that they are 50 per cent out in their calculations – does this mean they might also be 50 per cent out on the final costs or 50 per cent out on any safety measures that should be in place – a worrying scenario.

Alternatively, this was the figure for lorry movements that they always needed but would have been unpalatable at any public planning meeting (perhaps the costs involved in trans-shipping from the jetty are more than the mitigation package).

By submitting their retrospective application in this way it cannot be questioned, neither by the general public nor local elected officials who do not happen to be in the particular planning group involved in receiving the mitigation package. An equally worrying scenario for local democracy.

Mark Wilson, Lawford, Crowcombe.