County toughens position on wind farms in bid to halt "unrestrained invasion"

Lincolnshire County Council has this week beefed up its position statement on wind farms, saying it wanted to halt the “unrestrained invasion” of turbines across the region.

The local authority will use the statement – agreed on Wednesday by its Executive – as the basis for responses to wind farm proposals it may be consulted upon.

It will also be used as the authority’s response to district councils preparing development plan policies on such matters and as its position when discussing the issue at a national level.

The statement from Lincolnshire, which currently has 74 wind farms, says amongst other things that in general there is a presumption against wind turbine developments “on the grounds of potential negative cumulative visual impact, unless wind farms should be located such that they would not merge with the existing developments (on and off shore), thereby resulting in a negative cumulative visual impact”.

It also says that settlements of more than 10 dwellings should not have wind turbine developments in more than 90° of their field of view, “this normally equates to 10km from windows in residential properties”.

Individual dwellings should not have wind turbines in more than 180° of their field of view, the statement adds.

The minimum distance between a development and a residential property should be 2km, it says, unless through assessment it can be demonstrated that there would be acceptable noise levels within the 2km radius.

Other changes to the position statement include wording that whether individually or cumulatively, wind farm developments should not have a negative impact upon the local economy, particularly upon tourism.

“The cumulative impact of an off shore wind farm along the tourism coast is of particular concern, especially where the coastal strip would be visually dominated by such developments,” the statement adds.

The revision also suggests that large scale renewable proposals should demonstrate that they deliver economic, social, environmental and/or community benefits that are directly related to the proposed development and are of a reasonable scale and nature to the local area.

Lincolnshire first adopted a position statement on wind farms in 2010, in part because of concerns over the proliferation of such developments as a result of several key appeal decisions and changes to national planning policy.

A report prepared for this week’s Executive meeting pointed out that the county council was not the local planning authority nor was it a local plan making body.

“As such the county council has no ability to make planning statements or policy and this statement should be given as a political statement only,” it said.

Planning decisions will remain with the seven district councils in the county.

Cllr Martin Hill, Lincolnshire’s Leader, said: “There’s been a proliferation of wind farms across Lincolnshire in recent years, and we feel that enough is enough. Although we understand the need for alternative energy and are not opposed to all wind farms, we remain unconvinced by the questionable science behind them.

“Not only are these things spoiling our beautiful countryside for future generations, they could also seriously damage our tourism industry - who wants to spend their holiday looking at a 400ft turbine?”

Cllr Hill added: “Similarly, who wants to live next door to one? People enjoy living in Lincolnshire because we have a great way of life, not because the landscape’s blighted by wind farms. On top of that, there are also issues around the damage caused to roads during the construction and decommissioning of turbines.

“And at a time of rising ‘fuel poverty’ people shouldn’t have to subsidise these developments through their energy bills. For these reason, we want to raise the bar even higher for anyone wanting to construct a wind farm in the county, and urge them to think twice about the impact their plans will have.”

A report by the council’s Environment Scrutiny Committee can be viewed here.

Philip Hoult