How long can this go on?   By Geoff Sinclair
Geoff Sinclair is Principal of Environment Information Services (01834 891331). Since 1996 he has been retained by CPRW, on a part-time basis, specifically to deal with the campaign against inappropriately sited wind turbines.

That is the question I am asked time and time again all over Britain. Most people now realise that there is a dark side to the development of wind power that the TV commercials, Teletubbies and the weather forecasts gloss over. Apart from a deluge of local letters, anti-wind stories are rarely far from the national press. Tabloids to The Times, they have covered bird kills and the future of the red kites; localised ill health clusters around turbines; a blight on property and selling prices; tourism concerns; and countless stories about the harm to landscape and to people’s ability to enjoy an escape to an unscathed countryside. Technical journals have majored on articles critical of the whole enterprise, its dependency on back-up energy sources, or its disguise of the subsidy it still receives through the Renewables Obligation Certificates.

As turbines get bigger and spread to previously untargeted areas, and as the cumulative effect begins to strangle large areas of countryside, so more people respond adversely to this presumed passport to a greener future. In the last year I have spoken to packed public meetings in places as various as traditional Suffolk villages, the north of Scotland, the south Wales valleys, and Pennine mill towns. In addition to the obvious concerns, a new theme has emerged in areas where formerly scarred industrial landscapes have been cleared – ‘greened’ one might even say. The last thing they want is turbines on their liberated horizons. When I explain to people that the government admits we have more than enough projects in the making to exceed our targets, they cannot understand why there is such a pressure to bring in planning policies to erode the long-cherished protection of our countryside.

In England Mr Prescott’s very own Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) is consulting on a replacement for PPG (G is for Guidance) 22 on Renewable Energy with PPS (S is for Statement) 22. It is clearly designed to deliver the aims of energy policy and make it more difficult for planning authorities to operate longstanding policies to protect the countryside so inconveniently located in areas subject to (particularly) wind power development.

PPS7 on The Countryside has already set up this agenda by asserting that development plans should ‘promote and encourage rather than restrict’ and suggesting a deletion of the cherished concept of protecting the countryside for its own sake.

PPS22 introduces a test that renewable energy proposals should adversely affect whole designated areas before they can be held to be prejudicial; it seeks to weaken protection for Green Belts, buffer zones and local designations (including extensive Special Landscape Areas). Astonishingly, it specifically forbids local authorities to follow the Countryside Agency’s sensible ‘sequential approach’ of prioritising blighted rather than cherished areas for development on the bald and alarming reasoning that the most economically exploitable resource should be developed first. There is even an instruction to ignore the ability of offshore wind to over-reach the 2010 renewables target (as featured in a companion article on pages 26/27) so that its onshore cousin may enjoy an unimpeded run through our countryside.

How long before our very own TAN8, mysteriously pulled into the sidelines last year, emerges with a coat of English ‘green’ paint? CPRW has commented trenchantly across Offa’s Dyke that this is simply a protectionist device for one technology which has reached maturity against others which are approaching it, while giving it a special licence to circumvent previously cherished concepts of landscape protection.

Unfortunately, this is not the only distortion of policy egged on by the prospect that onshore wind power’s window of opportunity is steadily closing. The Forestry Commission has taken on itself ‘to help the government achieve its targets’ for wind power by felling vast areas of trees and offering up its carefully landscaped unplanted skylines for turbines. Controversial examples are springing up all over Scotland, where in Argyll they represent the vast majority of all sites. In Wales we have the ominous prospect of Camddwr, where 140 out of 180 turbines possibly 120m high are proposed to straddle the many skylines radiating from the unforgettable mountain road from Abergwesyn to Tregaron – in the so-nearly achieved Cambrian Mountains National Park (as those mourning for Cefn Croes will not need telling).

The Rheido Valley and Cefn Croes skyline - soon to be turbined.

I can see no rationale for the Commission to pursue this policy, and it has singularly failed to answer such criticism in both Wales and Scotland. It has a remit to consider wood-based schemes, and may licence its land for relevant purposes but its major responsibilities to the landscape, tranquillity and the ecology of its land - now held in our name by the Assembly - cannot be abandoned in what it is tempting to see as a lifeline for its own economic woes. Its bland assurance that ‘no scheme would be supported which would, on balance, be environmentally damaging’ is difficult to square with its published ‘Next Steps’ for Camddwr where its main preoccupation seems to be how to share the proceeds with the Camddwr Trust.

This does look like a determined policy to press on regardless before closing time is called. Other evidence is emerging to show that when weighed in the balance this policy escapade is found wanting. Wanting, for proof that it has to be elevated above acceptable competition, and wanting, as evidence of its other effects begins to solidify.

For long, complaints about conventional noise have been fended off with promises that the technology would improve. There is some truth in that, but the experience of that minority acutely affected by the compound effects of what they feel to be low frequency noise permeating buildings and ruining their lifestyles is now being taken seriously by medical research.

I have in my possession a heartfelt yet very sober diary by a Welsh farmer’s wife in west Wales whose life has been made a misery by symptoms she eventually realised correlated with winds blowing from the turbines to her farmhouse. Whenever they came on, she found the wind was blowing from the turbines: whenever they cleared up, the wind had abated or changed direction. She moved to the far end of the house, and then into an outhouse. The pain only abated when she moved out some miles. She has now had to sell up and is living blissfully on the coast. Fortunately she declared her problem to the purchasers, who were unaffected by it. Had she not done so, she could have been in further trouble. In a recent case a couple in Cumbria failed to stop a proposal, but sold their house without mentioning the consent. When the turbines were built the buyers disliked the visual intrusion and noise, took their case to law, and were awarded a 20% devaluation penalty plus compensation and costs.

So, how long can this go on? A good question, especially for the onshore wind developers who are still queuing up with applications and have told the government for years that the only thing stopping them reaching the targets was the planning system. At the moment it has degenerated into an undignified wind rush which simply speeds up at every sign that the end may be near. How long? Until there is a U-turn and an outbreak of common sense to prevent further malfunctions of energy policy and the demise of planning as we always understood it. Are you listening, Mr Deputy Prime Minister?

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