- Date released
- 10 March 2021
- Request number
- 202006001
- Release of information under
- Environmental Information Regulations 2004
Information requested
In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act and Environmental Information Regulations, I request the following two documents:
- The Consequence Report for AWE Burghfield, that was completed around November 2019 (the West Berkshire Council report on the DEPZ for Burghfield states "Due to governance processes within AWE and the MoD, they [the Consequence Reports for AWE Aldermaston and Burghfield] were not however released to the Council until 21st November 2019."
- The document ONR-LUP-NS-001 Land Use Planning and the Siting of Nuclear Installations.
Note that it appears that ONR intends this document to be published on its website. However, the link is to a different document with the same title.
Information released
1) The Consequence Report for AWE Burghfield, that was completed around November 2019
We confirm that ONR holds information of the description specified in your first request. Please find the AWE Burghfield Consequences Report (November 2019) attached to this response.
Please note that this information is already in the public domain. It is available on West Berkshire Council’s website on their Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) page.
2) The document ONR-LUP-NS-001 Land Use Planning and the Siting of Nuclear Installations
We confirm that ONR holds information of the description specified in your second request. Please find attached the document “ONR-LUP-NS-001 Land Use Planning and the Siting of Nuclear Installations” attached to this response.
We conducted a search of our electronic records and confirm that “ONR-LUP-NS-001 Land Use Planning and the Siting of Nuclear Installations” is the earlier draft of the issued “NS-LUP-GD-001 Land Use Planning and Siting of Nuclear Installations” available on our website. The only difference between the two documents is the document number “ONR-LUP-NS-001” which was created due to an initial error in using ONR’s document naming convention and was rectified for publication.
As we explained in our response to you of 15 February 2021, the reference number “ONR-LUP-NS-001“ in the document link on the “Land Use Planning” page of our website was incorrect. This has since been amended to correctly reflect the document reference number, “NS-LUP-GD-001”. Thank you again for notifying us of this error.
With regards to your email of 17 February 2021, which stated that:
“Please note that the document that I am requesting under my EIR request is ONR-LUP-NS-001, as referenced in the draft Local Plan for West Berkshire, where it is stated that this document defines "OCZ AWE A 8km from grid reference SU595635: OCZ AWE B 5km from grid reference SU684680".
I cannot find this information in the document NS-LUP-GD-001 that is available on your website, so I believe that a different ONR document must exist that contains this information. If the document number quoted in the draft Local Plan for West Berkshire is incorrect, please provide the document that contains this information. If the document has been superceded or withdrawn, please supply the document as was valid in January 2020 together with the corresponding document that is currently valid.”
We can confirm that the emerging West Berkshire Council Local Plan you refer to includes an incorrect reference to “ONR-LUP-NS-001” as the source of the co-ordinates provided. The AWE site’s centre points are not defined or included in this document or “NS-LUP-GD-001, nor have they ever been.”
We have since contacted West Berkshire Council to inform them of their incorrect reference in their draft Local Plan, and they have committed to correct this. Thank you for also drawing our attention to this error.
In relation to your above request for the document which contains the defined grid references referenced in the draft West Berkshire Council Local Plan, these are contained in the Consequence Assessments under the Radiation (Emergency Preparedness and Public Information) Regulations 2019 (REPPIR 19) for AWE Aldermaston and AWE Burghfield. We confirm that we do not hold these reports.
Accordingly, we suggest that you contact AWE via email at Information.Requests@awe.co.uk regarding this information.
Exemptions applied
Regulation 13(1)
PIT (Public Interest Test) if applicable
N/A