Yahoo News Controversial Fylde Coast windfarm cable plans accepted despite huge concerns
Controversial plans to lay miles of cable to link two proposed windfarms to a substation near Preston have been accepted by the Planning Inspectorate – prompting concerns from Fylde Council.
Residents and businesses in the areas which would be impacted, such as St Annes, Wrea Green and Kirkham, have long been campaigning against the proposals. They set up the protest group, ‘Against the Wind Farm Onshore Cable and Substation Plans across the Fylde’ to raise awareness and challenge the plans, fearing the scheme would scar the land and cause extreme disruption to homes and livelihoods.
Now Fylde Council has added its voice to those concerns. It comes in a week in which the Planning Inspectorate announced it has accepted an application for a Development Consent Order (DCO) to connect two planned wind farms in the Irish Sea to the national grid at the Penwortham Substation.
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The proposed development involves undersea cables landing near Blackpool Airport and running underground to two substations between Kirkham and Newton, before continuing underground and beneath the River Ribble to Penwortham. The scheme will now go to the next stage of the planning process.
Fylde Council made representations to the Planning Inspectorate expressing concern that the pre-application consultation was inadequate as it did not appear to include notification of all interested parties. The council also raised concerns that the level of detail available at the consultation stage was not sufficiently detailed to allow affected communities and other key stakeholders to make meaningful comments.
What Fylde Council leaders say
Leader of Fylde Council, Councillor Karen Buckley, said: “Our submission to the Planning Inspectorate was a clear request to decline to accept the application to progress to the next stage. Instead, we asked that the proposals be refined and further consultations take place with the local community, statutory consultees and stakeholders.
“This would have allowed the applicants to further consider appropriate alternative routing for the proposed connections to the national grid which would have a lesser environmental impact, be less costly to implement and even provide an opportunity for more economic growth, such as the nearby site at Hillside Technology Enterprise Zone which is close to a grid connection at Stanah.
“The fact that this opportunity has been missed demonstrates a blinkered approach that ignores the local geography of Fylde and risks the implementation of a scheme that threatens homes and local livelihoods that support our community."
Deputy Leader of Fylde Council and Chair of the Planning Committee Councillor Richard Redcliffe added: “We are extremely disappointed that the Planning Inspectorate has decided to accept the application despite the view of the local council that the consultation exercise carried out prior to the submission of the application was flawed. The report outlining the reasons for the application being accepted has not yet been published and we intend to carefully review the Planning Inspectorate’s reasoning for accepting the application.
“Fylde Council will continue to make representations to the proposal at the next stages of the procedure and would encourage residents who may be directly or indirectly impacted by the development to register with the Inspectorate so that they remain informed of the process and to make their views known to the Inspectorate.”
Coun Redciffe said that whilst Fylde Council is committed to providing for renewable energy and the infrastructure that supports it, this must be balanced against the potential impacts on the environment and local communities. Fylde Council objected to the proposed connection for a number of reasons including the potential impact of the project on agricultural land, the visual impact of the extremely large substations that would be required and the widespread disturbance that would be created during the construction phase.
The scheme is known as the Morgan and Morecambe Offshore Wind Farms: Transmission Assets project. The Morgan element of the scheme is to be developed under a joint venture between bp and EnBW Energie Baden-Wurttemberg AG.
The Morecambe side is under a joint venture between Cobra and Flotation Energy. BP says both projects have the combined potential to generate up to 2GW.
A spokesman previously stated: “Having an open dialogue with communities is critical as the project progresses to refine its proposals and we greatly value the feedback from local residents and stakeholders.”
