Infrastructure Planning (Onshore Wind Generating Stations) Order 2016

Lord Grantchester Excerpts

Monday 8th February 2016 Grand Committee

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his brief introduction. I fear that I will show a lot of my own personal ignorance about the subject in my questions because, as he said, it is one part of a jigsaw; the question is how it fits in.

Perhaps I am being naive but I expect the Explanatory Memorandum to be fairly objective. Paragraph 7.1 states:

“Local communities are often opposed to onshore wind farm development, arguing that they have direct noise and detrimental impacts on their communities”.

Yes, it is true to a degree that some are opposed but, on the whole, they are not. It is usually a vociferous number of people who object to them and make planners’ and local councillors’ lives very difficult. It is up to them to stand up to that sort of pressure and make the right decision. That does not represent the majority.

Paragraph 7.3 states:

“Such reviews help to strike the right balance between keeping consumers’ bills as low as possible, while reducing emissions in the most cost effective way and ensuring public acceptability of particular technologies”.

As we know, wind power, as shown by the ROC rates and everything else, is one of the cheapest renewable sources of energy, so I am not sure how that paragraph fits in.

Part 10 of the Explanatory Memorandum concerns the impact. I have not read the impact assessment: I think that there was a problem in that it originally referred to the wrong one, but the memorandum states:

“There is no impact on business, charities … voluntary bodies”,

or,

“the public sector”.

Then what is the point of it? I can see the point, but if there is no impact whatsoever, that is rather strange.

I actually welcome the order in principle. The Minister is absolutely right: local communities should have much more say over their local areas and decisions such as these. Placing them back into the local authority planning process is the right thing to do, so I welcome that.

What I want to understand—this is where my ignorance comes out—is how it interacts with the National Planning Policy Framework, which specifically uses the phrase “a golden thread” of sustainable development: that there should be acceptance that schemes should go ahead if they promote sustainable development. Does that still apply when local authority planning decisions are questioned further up the decision tree on appeal?

Paragraph 97 of the National Planning Policy Framework states:

“To help increase the use and supply of renewable and low carbon energy, local planning authorities should recognise the responsibility on all communities to contribute to energy generation from renewable or low carbon sources”.

Then it goes through a list of bullet points of things they ought to do. How do those obligations on local planning authorities tie in with this secondary legislation and the other areas that the Minister mentioned around it?

The Explanatory Memorandum also says that local authorities’ planners have to take account of neighbourhood plans or local plans. I want to understand whether that is a “both” or an “either/or”, because a lot of local plans have renewable energy and wind farms in them. What happens if this is not included in the neighbourhood plan but is included in a local plan, for instance? I suspect that that will often be the case given that neighbourhood plans still do not cover large proportions of areas that local planning committees take an interest in.

I have a couple of other quick things for the Minister. Five-megawatt wind farms are pretty large, and I would be interested to know how many applications for such wind farms there have been over the last five years or so. I do not need a specific answer but perhaps the Minister could give an idea of the kind of scale we are talking about. Also, are there other areas where local authorities do not have control over less than 30 megawatts? A number of parallels have been made with shale gas—which I am not against—where there is a big push the other way in terms of trying to put pressure on local authorities to give permission or to call the decisions in if they do not. I would be interested to hear how the Minister reconciles the two opposite directions that energy policy seems to be going in at present.

[Lord Grantchester (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for his explanation to the Committee today. The order seems to be primarily technical in that it changes the planning consent process from one where the Secretary of State is included to one where the local planning authorities make the decisions on an application concerning onshore wind-generating stations over 50 megawatts—that is, from the Planning Act 2008 to the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. This is in the context of the Conservative Party’s manifesto for the 2015 election and will make the procedure for consent for stations that generate above 50 megawatts consistent with that governing those that generate less than 50 megawatts. Perhaps to underline the simple policy objective sought here, can the Minister confirm that, apart from changing the ultimate determining authority from the Secretary of State to local planning authorities, no other feature will be affected by this change and that there is no other difference between the two processes for onshore generating stations above and below 50 megawatts?

We are content to support this SI. Indeed, we support the right of local authorities to decide onshore wind power applications so that they can decide on the case made in terms of them supporting jobs, providing energy stability, cutting energy bills and contributing to action to mitigate possible global warming. This change is also reflected in Clause 79 of the Energy Bill, which is currently undergoing scrutiny in the other place. During consideration of the Bill, it has been noted that the Conservative Government judge local authorities effective to rule on onshore wind applications, yet will not allow local authorities to assess applications regarding fracking. We consider that communities should be allowed a pertinent voice in both situations.

Your Lordships’ Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee drew attention to the lack of a wider impact assessment on the UK’s generating power. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, drew attention to the wider impact on the national infrastructure framework. I support him in asking the Minister whether he will report to Parliament six months after the passage of the present Energy Bill to update Parliament on the effect of this SI, especially in relation to the carbon impact and the Energy Bill.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their contributions and for their general support. I turn first to questions posed by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, on the Explanatory Memorandum. He is absolutely right that with this policy we are emphasising the importance of the local say for communities—that is the predominant factor in this legislation. The noble Lord quoted from the Explanatory Memorandum and suggested that it was tilted in favour of one particular view of onshore wind. I recognise, as has become very apparent from the Energy Bill and contributions in other debates, that opinions vary on onshore wind.