Ed Davey: New planning regulations dont allow local veto for wind turbines
Energy Secretary Ed Davey today dismissed fears that the government is favouring shale gas developments over wind power by allowing communities “ veto power” on new turbine developments. In fact, the government’s new guidance on renewable energy developments could work in wind’s favour, a legal expert tells Carbon Brief.
Earlier in the summer, anti-windfarm campaigners appeared to have won an important concession when local government secretary Eric Pickles announced new planning guidance that would give communities more say over windfarm siting and “give greater weight to landscape and visual impact concerns”.
The rules would even give local communities the power to block windfarms, according to the Daily Telegraph. A “senior Conservative source” told the paper:
“The Prime Minister strongly feels that this is a real local issue and if people don’t want to have windfarms they don’t have to have them. This is a bomb proof set of safeguards to protect the wishes of local people”.
But, speaking at a Royal Society event today, Davey said the government had not granted local residents the power to say no to new wind developments, despite “spin” to the contrary.
New guidance
The new guidance forms a part of the government’s National Planning Policy Framework. It applies to all renewable energy developments – including solar farms – not just wind power.
Like all planning policy, it requires decisionmakers to balance “all relevant material considerations” against each other. That means balancing factors including the government’s renewable energy targets, the impact on landscape and the energy generating potential of the development.
Head of planning at law firm Norton Rose Fulbright, Nigel Hewitson, tells Carbon Brief:
“The idea that communities were suddenly going to be able to say no to windfarms was political spin â?¦ The government would have had to change the planning system as a whole if there was ever going to be a veto.”
Planning the details
Industry group Renewable-UK says it sees the new document as little more than a consolidation of pre-existing rules.
But Hewitson says he think its actually good news for the industry. First, it requires local authorities to “positively identify” sites for wind and renewable energy, as a part of the wider planning framework.
Second, for each type of renewable energy the document sets out come criteria that should be taken into account in making decisions.
For wind, this includes noise, risk of collision with birds and bats, and the impact on the visual landscape. It doesn’t include claims about windfarms that have a weaker evidence base, such as the fear that turbine blades will break off, or that turbines cause health problems.
Hewitson says:
“This is the first really consistent and technology specific guidance that’s come out. Everybody is going to have to be singing from the same hymnsheet, and everybody will have to agree what the criteria are [for making decisions].”
The government “flirted” with the idea of introducing buffer zones between windfarms and people’s homes, Hewitson says. But that is also ruled of the document – which says local authorities should not “rule out otherwise acceptable renewable energy developments through inflexible rules on buffer zones or separation distances”.
No more windfarms
The guidance doesn’t seem to have reduced the number of windfarms due to be built in the UK. A Sunday Telegraph investigation in August found the Planning Inspectorate said has yes to nine out of 14 windfarm plans since Pickles made the announcement in June.
Anti-wind campaigners quoted in the piece said the decisions flew in the face of Pickles’s guidance. But as website Businessgreen suggested at the time, it looks a lot like Pickles’s messaging was mainly intended to placate the parts of the media that appear implacably opposed to more windfarms – whatever the conditions.
It appears the government’s anti-windfarm spin was never reflected in the reality of its planning guidance – and isn’t now.