Wind Farm Meeting At Sponne School

I organised a meeting on Monday 7 November to discuss onshore wind farms with Charles Hendry MP, Minister of State for Energy and a dozen other MP Colleagues. The issues I wanted to raise were:

1. Localism – how do wind farms being approved on appeal fit with our Localism agenda?
2. Technology – what realistic contribution can wind farms make to meeting our energy needs?
3. Fuel poverty – how are we going to deal with the problem of more and more people falling into fuel poverty as energy bills keep on rising?

It was a constructive meeting with the Minister answering a number of questions and later in the week he wrote to me. You can read the letter here. Since then I have held a meeting in the constituency with representatives of the 92 parish councils in the district.

I was able to give them some positive news:

1. The Government have confirmed that developers will be encouraged to build wind farms in genuinely wind areas! As South Northamptonshire is one of the least windy places in the country this is good news.
2. The Minister for Energy also told me that the subsidy for wind farms will be cut by 10% in 2013. The Government believes that this may make South Northamptonshire even more unattractive for developers when combined with low wind speeds. The viability of an application is now a material planning consideration.
3. We also discussed the Localism Bill which has now received Royal Assent. The Bill will amongst other things abolish regional renewables targets and introduces the right for communities to come together and produce neighbourhood plans to shape their environment. It is intended that local councils will provide help and assistance in producing them.

The focus of planning will now be to give the power to local people and key to this was the introduction of Neighbourhood Development. Top down targets are being abolished.

Yardley Gobion was selected to be a pilot village earlier this year to produce a NDP and having worked with South Northamptonshire District Council they have produced an excellent plan. I hope that this could be used as a template for other villages. Some villages and communities may be too small to produce their own plan but several villages could come together to produce a plan and share some of the burden. The NDPs are a 'right' not an 'obligation' and if communities don't produce one the local plan adopted by the district council will apply.

The Minister also spoke about looking at other types of renewable energy such as biomass, photovoltaic, offshore wind and tidal technology. He stressed that in order to meet our energy security needs a mix of renewable energy sources are needed. This also must include nuclear energy.

There were a number of concerns raised such as the cut in subsidy of solar photovoltaic and the 'grey area' that exists from now until the Localism Bill is law and communities have had an opportunity to come up with Neighbourhood Development Plans. The issue of minimum distances being set for wind turbines was also discussed. However, the Minister explained that the problem with setting minimum distances is that this can quite often have unintended consequences. If there was a minimum distance this might rule out a wind turbine being built in an industrial area which might be quite suitable and could mean that wind farms could only ever be built in the countryside.

I have written to the Minister following the meeting to raise a number of the concerns which were discussed and further updates will follow. You can read the letter here.

(Picture shows Andrea at the meeting at Sponne School)

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