Council to get £1m for hosting nuclear site
PA MediaA council is set to receive £1m in funding from the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA).
The money will be given to Cumberland Council as part of an agreement to help fund the cost of hosting the Sellafield nuclear site.
The cash would come from the NDA's Responsible Authority Fund (RAF) and would see the council granted two tranches of £500,000 for 2025-26 and 2026-27.
Councillors are set to meet next week to discuss whether to formally accept the funding.
A report outlining details of the fund stated the council faced multiple challenges "in terms of mitigating the social, economic and environmental impacts of hosting the site".
"The RAF is provided by the NDA to support the council to ensure that staff resources, relevant skills, knowledge and capability exist and remain within the organisation to respond to these challenges," it reads.
"This funding must be utilised within the footprints of the former Copeland Borough Council area," it added.
The council's executive committee has been advised to authorise the leader and chief executive to accept the RAF and delegate an assistant director to manage the funding, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
If approved the money could be used to:
- Deliver activity associated with hosting Sellafield
- Offset costs of staff needed to deliver work associated with the plant
- Develop programmes that benefit communities living near Sellafield
The reported also stated the council could refuse to accept the RAF but this would risk it having to pay costs through its own budgets or "not adequately responding to these issues".
