Weston Turbines – Say No

STOP PRESS 23 APRIL 2009

NHDC Planning Control Committee voted unanimously to reject the application following a recommendation by the planning officer to refuse. Further documentation will be posted in due course. It is not known whether the applicant will appeal. Present at the meeting were several local landowners interested in wind farm development on their own land.

This is a great result for members of WARD and the Weston Wind Turbine Working Group following years of hard work and fully vindicates the position we have taken.

The grounds for refusal were mainly related to :-

Harm to, and inappropriate development, on the green belt;

Unacceptable visual impact;

Inadequate acoustic assessment;

Aircraft safety in respect of the airfields at Rush Green and Graveley;

Turbine safety in respect of the proximity to a nearby road and footpath.

The planning officer was also critical of the applicant’s Environmetal Impact Statement including an inadequate assessment of the impact on biodiversity particularly the local bat population.

The Committee went on to discuss, as statutory consultee to Mid Beds Council, an application for a 16 turbine wind farm a few miles north of Weston. There is a considerable danger of the area being overwhelmed by wind farm development and the planning officer in his report is recommending that consideration now be given to constraint mapping in the future as advised by PPS22.  He said  “….it would now seem doubtful that there is a significant capacity for the scale of technology being proposed here.”

After many months of work by a dedicated team of local people, a highly detailed objection document has been published. This sets out a list of objections, each with a rationale, to the proposed Weston Wind Farm development.  The document also includes a section of photomontages giving an accurate impression of the impact the turbines would have from various viewpoints including Letchworth and Baldock, the latter being something that is lacking in the planning application. The document has been delivered to the North Hertfordshire District Council Planning Department and is now being circulated more widely.  The objection document can be downloaded here as a 4 Mb Adobe pdf file, it’s 83 pages long.   I think it is the best documented and argued objection to a Wind Turbine development that I have ever read.  If you are currently undecided about the Weston Wind Farm development then this work will clearly illustrate why it is inappropriate for the proposed location.

In a recent report the East Hertfordshire Planning Officer recommended that the Benington Wind Farm should be rejected and the East Hertfordshire planning committee has tonight agreed with that recommendation and voted against the Benington Wind Farm.  Full details of the Planning Officers report and a report on the vote can be read on the Stop Benington Wind Farm web site.

We congratulate the Stop Benington Wind Farm campaigners on their success in stopping a development very similar to the one proposed at Weston.

A recently released video on the New Scientist website shows why bats are being killed by Wind Turbines.  It is not very long and makes very interesting viewing.

It’s not too late to register your objection to the Weston Wind Farm, full details of how to to do it are here.  May people have already sent in letters and emails but there are still others who think this farm with not affect them.  Take a look at this map which shows the position of the turbines and rings showing the distances they are houses.  As you can nearly all of Weston is less than a mile from the turbines – far too close for comfort according to many experts.  They conclude that turbines should not be built closer than 2 kilometres ( 1.24 miles) to houses to avoid residents lives being made a misery by noise.  You can read more about the noise problem by clicking here.

UPDATED 6th December

Please note NHDC are still accepting objections! Objections can be made by email to richard.tiffin@north-herts.gov.uk.  The planning application reference is 08/00047/1 and should be quoted in your letter or email.  

Full details of the current Weston Wind Farm application is on the North Herts District Council website and can be read from there. Here are the relevant links for reading, analysing and objecting.

1. Full details of the planning application are here and you can see a link to documents which you click on the get a full list of all the documents for the application. or just click here to get there.
2. At the time of the previous application a detailed analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of the wind farm was made and a pdf version of the excellent report can be downloaded by clicking here.
3. We think its is vital that you object to this proposal and have written a short document on how to do so which can be downloaded as a Word document by clicking here.
4. It can be hard to put pen to paper so we have drafted a couple of letters which you can use as templates for your letter, just click on either link to download them as Word documents. All tyou need to do is add your name and address, sign them and get them in the post. Example Objection Letter 1 or look at Example Objection Letter 2. You don’t have to send your letter by post, emails are also accepted and are, of course, much quicker. If you do send an email please include your name and address so NHDC can register and acknowledge your objection.  Emails should be sent to richard.tiffin@north-herts.gov.uk

Growing opposition to the proposals by Weston land owners John and Paul Cherry to build a wind farm just outside Baldock and Letchworth gained intensity at a meeting held by WARD (Weston Against Rural Destruction) on Saturday 15 November.

Weston village hall was packed to standing-room-only by people from Letchworth, Baldock and surrounding areas, including many NHDC Councillors, for an all day seminar “Let’s Talk Turbines”.   North-East Herts MP Oliver Heald spoke expressing his grave concerns over the Weston planning application.  Two guest speakers, Jane Davis and Sarah Price talked about their devastating first hand experience of living close to wind farms and the intolerable effect of the noise on health and the sleep depravation.  Sound recordings formed impressionable evidence against the wisdom of constructing huge industrial turbines as close to dwellings as the proposed Weston development

Both speakers had been forced out of their houses by the noise and vibrations emanating from the wind farms close to their dwellings -  “People were shell-shocked by Jane Davis’s and Sarah Price’s presentations –  they realised it could happen to them.  Many who were previously in favour of the application had their minds opened and said they would now be writing to NHDC opposing the plans.” commented a WARD spokes person.

Further encouragement to WARD’s campaign came last week when Weston Parish Council announced the results of a village poll that they had conducted on the subject to establish local public opinion.  Voting papers were delivered to every house in Weston asking whether residents were for or against the planning application for the Weston Wind Turbines.

On 13 November, Weston Parish Council announced that responses counted on the closing date for replies revealed that a staggering 76% were against the project whilst only 23% were for it.  Weston PC has announced that they will write to North Herts District Council’s Planning Officers supporting this majority view of residents and outlining their opposition to the planning application.

Coincidentally, this ratio of opinion mirrors similar findings from a web-poll conducted by “The Comet” in October, where views were taken from a far wider public audience.  This also reflects a similar pattern of wide objections to the Weston Wind Turbine planning application on the NHDC website.

Noise is not the only issue – at a far wider regional level and referring to the Weston proposal, the influential organisation, the East of England Regional Assembly has ‘significant reservations that the integrity of the Green Belt could be harmed by the installation of wind turbines within the current boundary’.  In addition to Weston – Benington, Litlington, Bygrave and Langford are just a few other local sites said to be being targeted by private developers with an eye for huge profits.

WARD is issuing a strong word of warning, “This is no time for complacency.  The only way to have any real clout is for people to state their objections in an email or letter to Richard Tiffin at NHDC.  Their closing date is 1^st December – so now is the time to act before it is too late.  Our website www.westonturbines.org.uk gives full details of how to object.”

Those wishing to contact WARD should email: westonturbines@yahoo.co.uk  or phone 0793 4432084. 

We held a well attended Open Meeting on Saturday 15th November to explain the implications of the proposed wind farm for the local community.  Oliver Heald MP voiced his strong opposition to the proposal some of which was covered on  Anglia news and can be watched by clicking here.  He was then followed by two speakers who described how they had been driven from their homes by the noise and vibration from nearby wind farms. 

The very well attended Wind Turbine Meeting

A bigger description of the event will go on this website shortly but in the meantime please get you objection written and sent to North Herts District Council (please quote planning reference 08/00047/1) .  The formal closing date for objections is 1st December 2008 so send your objection in now!   Sadly you can’t object because your house value will be affected but you can object for many other equally valid reasons.  Take a look at our how to object document.

Scientists have found that Bats are very vulnerable to Wind Farms as has been covered by the BBC.  Two years ago, EU nations formally agreed to make developers aware of the risks that wind farms pose to Bats, and find ways of monitoring Bat migration routes. A bid to build a wind farm near Bideford in north Devon was turned down because of the potential impact on Bats.

We do have a good population of Bats in and around Weston as anyone outside on a summer evening will have seen.  The Herts & Middlesex Bat Group (HMBG) are actively preparing their response to the Weston turbine application, which will be sent to NHDC.

Herts & Middlessex Bat Group

One of the activities of the Group is to collate information about bat roosts – and we can all help them do this.  To support their work they would be very pleased to hear from anyone who knows the whereabouts of a bat roost.  So if you have a roost in your garden shed, your roof, barn, garage, even a large tree, they would like to hear from YOU.  The bats are hibernating now, but please forward your information to enquiries@hmbg.org.uk  The information does not have to be limited to the Weston area.  Please also visit the HMBG web site for more information  http://www.hertsmiddlesexbatgroup.org.uk/

Our fight against the Weston Wind Farm was featured on ITV today click here to watch it . It featured interviews with Tony Ainsworth as they review the turbine site followed by questions to Jane Undery. Tony Ainsworth will also be featured on Three Counties Radio between 0600 and 0630 on Friday 14th November. We may also get a reporter from the BBC on Saturday to cover our Lets Talk Turbines Meeting .