Chamber and committees

Audra MacPhee submission of 29 September 2021

PE1864/YYYY: Increase the ability of communities to influence planning decisions for onshore windfarms

I support this petition – my evidence below demonstrates the need for change.

My family and I have experienced being up against one of the big multinational energy giants fighting several windfarm planning applications for the past 10 years or more - to say it has been and still is a David and Goliath experience is an understatement as this company seem to have an army of “Goliaths”. In the past 10 years there have been applications for at least four large scale windfarm developments and several smaller scale developments on land adjacent to our home.

I feel that we have been let down by planning process, public inquiry and the Scottish Government. This fight is not over but we have had to learn to live with the fall out of these developments proceeding which for our family has meant living next to an industrial scale windfarm and the impact that these turbines have had on our outlook and the nuisance they cause us in respect of noise. Three large scale windfarm developments were approved, one of these applications went to public inquiry (PI) and subsequently approval for the development was granted by Scottish Ministers. The result of this is that we live with 88 wind turbines on 3 sides of our home, turbines which are 100m+ and 26 of which being within a 2km radius of our home.

The actual process of navigating planning at local authority level in respect of objecting is ominous, the terminology and documentation even in a basic application can be beyond most laypeople. Then when local planning fails and your application heads along the PI route. There is nothing else to do but to seek professional help in respect of acoustic expert and legal counsel and then you face the daunting experience of this impacting on your family financially in addition to the other implications of a fight such as this. The PI process for us was intimidating even with support from our legal counsel. As a witness the developers legal counsel did an excellent job of character assassination and branded many of those who fought the development to be suffragette type objectors! It was interesting to note that expert witnesses got treated with a great deal of respect even when their opinions differed however those within the community, who had to live with the issue these developments created, were treated with contempt and made to look foolish - no short of bullying tactics. I was very disappointed that the Reporter in charge of our PI did not put a stop to this behaviour and the treatment of those who bore witness.

I believe that decisions such as windfarm applications need to have input from people who have a vested interest in the area and know the geography and surrounding communities and for any such decision to be upheld not overridden by the Scottish Ministers.

In our fight against these developments, we have found that human beings, families, communities seem to mean nothing when these developments are being considered and that we may have had more of a chance of holding back the application had we been a protected species of animal or bird!

Many of the individuals within the community who fought these developments have now given up either disheartened or overwhelmed by it all. My family and I are still fighting!

The whole planning process for this type of application needs reform otherwise there will continue to be casualties like us. Once planning has been granted there is little recourse in getting developers to address any problems or concerns in respect of construction of this type of development or operation of these plants.