Onshore Wind Turbines

Eric Ollerenshaw Excerpts

Wednesday 13th October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Charles Hendry]

I am not aware of the specific cases to which my hon. Friend refers. If he writes to me, I will be more than happy to look into them.

We have to move to a greater spirit of partnership so that communities can see precisely what they would get out of hosting a facility and realise that genuine benefits would come to them—not necessarily from a wind farm but from other facilities, as well. Other countries have gone down a similar route and we are learning from the approaches that they have taken. We have also seen the significant number of green jobs generated here, albeit not as many as we would have wished from the supply-chain benefits coming to the United Kingdom, and the potential that that brings

I realise that my hon. Friends who contributed to the debate are less concerned about that aspect than they are about the implications of onshore wind for their constituencies, so I particularly want to address those issues. We have seen the benefits from offshore wind, but we recognise that communities often feel concerned that proposed wind farms in their areas will destroy the environment or have other negative impacts. We are convinced that, in the policy of localism that we are going to drive forward, local councils should be the driving force in deciding how they want their communities to develop. That is a fundamental part of the planning changes we are making.

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

In terms of localism, does the Department look at any measurements? What concerns inhabitants who debate the possibilities and planning applications is that the applications are turned down and then repeated, coming back with one fewer turbine and then two fewer turbines, so they go through the process again and again, and lose all confidence in any aspiration to real localism.

[Charles Hendry]

That is central to predetermination and to ensuring that more of the work is done through earlier discussion between the developer and the council, so they can agree what they think might be generally desirable. We are making those changes. We also need to ensure that we have lead authorities with particular expertise in handling such applications. Many authorities have not dealt with such applications before and do not know how to handle them when they come through. Finding ways to build a genuine body of expertise within local authorities is part of the approach we are considering.

We removed regional spatial strategies and the top-down regional energy targets, because they moved us away from the localism we want. We are committed, in relation to applications for below 50 MW, to local communities and local councils deciding how their areas will develop. The new planning framework will cover all forms of development and set out national economic, environmental and social priorities. Tackling climate change and ensuring our energy security will be among our top priorities, but as I said, we want communities and individuals to own a stake in our collective low-carbon future. That is why we are looking at how local communities can benefit from business rates staying locally, and why we want more genuine community ownership of applications, so that people can see the link between hosting a facility and the benefits that it brings directly to the local area and to the services that people care about.