Chamber and committees

Alison Chapman submission of 12 June 2021

PE1864/UU - Increase the ability of communities to influence planning decisions for onshore windfarms

In 2000, a proposal was made for forty-four small wind turbines, followed by a shift to twenty-three, 365 foot high turbines on the peat rich hills adjoining our farm, a rare watershed for three major rivers in an area rich in archaeology, famous for its beauty, culture and long history. Robert Burns declared in Balmaclellanlan ‘This place would make a blockhead into a poet’.

Many have been inspired, as the popular annual Spring Fling arts festival demonstrates, to be creative within The Glenkens’ small and friendly communities, but the proposal divided them. The greater number being opposed to any structures on the hills visible for miles around Loch Ken. Local harmony was disturbed, some seeing opportunity for profits, others concerned for the welfare of the Black Grouse, economic dependence on tourism and loss of the area’s feeling of remoteness in the Dark Sky Park the world’s third and Europe’s first, now with its own Observatory, Planetarium, and designated Biosphere. At the centre the nearly century old hydro-electric scheme still efficiently works as a renewable capable of powering 93,000 or so households with electricity while helping to preserve fish stocks and a healthy river system.

A decade or so of applications, meetings, and a Public Local Inquiry followed after the local council voted against the application, incurring huge expense and effort for it to combat what was being proposed. During the PLI, which was interrupted for many months, hopes were raised and then dashed when in the end the Scottish Government granted permission against the expressed local democratic view.

It took another half dozen years for the wind farm to be erected and commissioned – not least the narrow winding local roads forming an obstruction but in the end with the aid of some £80 million loaned by the Green Investment Bank the wind farm was commissioned.

There were many provisions in so-called ‘Conditions’ which had to be complied with but to date, despite many enquiries and requests for information about, for example, noise measurements, water quality, bird and bat strikes, the relocation of the Black Grouse project, but nothing much has been learned about any of the environmental and ecological impact, adverse or beneficial, of the construction. Reportedly in 2018, a hot, dry summer, a number of adders were spotted on the lower slopes amid speculation amongst those that spotted them that perhaps they were reacting to the vibration/noise that had begun. The latest request for data made in February has not yet had a reply because of Covid, amongst other pressures which include for the local authority some 84 proposed new taller (250 metre plus) wind turbines proposed which would encircle Balmaclellan, Corsock, Mochrum, (and its vitrified fort) Parton and seemingly make the residents around Corsock actually reside within a wind farm rather than just alongside or below one. This is the ‘saturation point’ identified by ‘Save Our Hills’ the local action group which succeeded ‘Save Loch Urr’ which succeeded the ten year epic battle by ‘GLARE’ (Galloway Landscape And Renewable Energy). All these proposals have emerged over nearly 20 years of stress and anxiety among residents about possible impacts and for the last two years in the midst of a worldwide pandemic with its associated curtailment of normal communications and the added stress and anxiety associated with such pandemics.

In addition, this kind of activity follows on from a gradual infiltration into communities of a variety of local trusts being set up which can be used as conduits for access by developers or agents to publicity advertising their ‘commitment’ to the community as well offering a competition for grants open to groups/individuals with a project for ‘community development’ adjudicated by the trust officers and drawing on the so-called ‘community benefit’ proffered in the application for a wind farm.

Even so, that there is a large section of our community opposed to such ‘development’ can hardly be in question. However, there is now some evidence that developers or their agents are selecting ‘potential supporters’ for their proposals by privately offering some inducement to facilitate ‘access’ along those same narrow winding roads for these even bigger turbines and their parts. And so, the divisions in our small communities remain exploitable for which it would seem the only remedy is to place the planning and decision-making not in the hands of central government but rather in the firm hands of our democratically constituted and elected local councillors.