Stop Turbines In North Cornwall

A cosy cartel

Sat May 31 2008

North Cornwall District Council (NCDC) for whatever reason appear to be more than happy to continually allow wind farm developers to flout planning guidelines in their submissions to them. This subject is not about whether an application should be allowed on its merits or not but on the fact that planning guidelines are not being followed and NCDC seem indifferent to this fact even though Stop Turbines In North Cornwall (STINC) have pointed this out to them.

The Environmental Statements (ES) that the developers submit to planning officers state the guidance that they are following in their application. Unfortunately regarding the photomontages, they continually break the guidance.

What does this mean and does it really matter? Well STINC believes it does. At present the photomontages causes the scale of the developments to be under-represented by a factor of up to three yet our Council takes no notice.

The English guidelines are contained in the Guidelines for Landscape and Visual Impact Assessment (GLVIA), which was produced by the Landscape Institute. The GLVIA covers landscape and visual impact assessment for all manner of developments and is not directed specifically towards wind turbine development, nor does it go into great detail on guidance for photomontages.

On the other hand, the guidance in the Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) Guidance document is aimed specifically at wind turbine development and purely covers visual impact assessment. The SNH Guidance goes into much greater detail on photomontages than the GLVIA.

For these reasons the developers in England use SNH Guidance in preference to the GLVIA when judging the visual impact of wind turbine proposals. Landscape professionals, planning officers and others in England for the same reasons, use the SNH Guidance.

The SNH Guidance clearly states that to illustrate predicted visual impacts to a wide audience, single frame 50mm focal length images should be used. These images give a far more true to life picture. This is what the developers are afraid of so they chose to ignore this part of the guidance. Why do NCDC and their consultants remain complicit with the developers on this issue?

If you or I were to seek planning permission from the Council and the plans were not to the correct scale or were misleading in some way the Council would not accept them until they were amended. So why are wind farm developers an exception to this rule?

A clear example of this is the recent application for the re-powering of Delabole wind farm. Once more NCDC have accepted misleading photomontages. All views are shown in A3 format on a single page showing photograph, wire-line and photomontage. This triple visualisation means a reduced image size, in this case 43mm less per image than the SNH Guidance and under half of the preferred standard of 200mm as recommended by Professor Benson in his acclaimed University of Newcastle report.

This makes the turbines look further away and smaller than they would be in reality. Why does NCDC keep accepting triple visualisations when they do not meet the SNH Guidance? STINC have asked both the Council and the developers (Good Energy Generation Ltd) this question. So far we have met with no response.

All we wish to see is for NCDC to make the developers adhere to the Guidance and supply single frame 50mm focal length images in their ES in either A3 or A4, so as to give a realistic impression of reality. This issue applies to all the wind farm applications that we have so far looked at in North Cornwall. The presentation techniques now being used we believe are deliberately misleading and confusing.

On a lighter note Good Energy now state on their web site, and I quote “very little if any of the turbines will be visible”, so magic, Cornwall has the worlds first invisible wind farm. Not bad for structures of 110m if given planning.

Colin Caudery, 31st May 2008