Oral Answers to Questions

Glyn Davies Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Gregory Barker]

We are at the dawn of a far more exciting and expansive long-term project. We are talking not only about lagging lofts, but about the whole-house retrofit of millions of homes, and our impact assessment shows that we will create tens of thousands of jobs by 2015. Perhaps the hon. Lady would stop scaremongering about interest rates and start getting behind all the consumers and small businesses that will benefit from the green deal.

[Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

9. What steps he is taking to enable local communities to express opposition to onshore wind farms in their area.

[The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Mr Edward Davey)]

It is important that communities have a real opportunity to have a say over development in their area, which is why this Government’s planning reforms put local communities in the driving seat. Our recent call for evidence looked at how communities can be better engaged with, and receive greater benefit from, hosting onshore wind in their area, and there will be a report in the summer.

[Glyn Davies]

Powys council is a small, rural, hard-pressed local planning authority that is currently having to divert £2.8 million from public services to defend refusals of wind farms at public inquiry, and the local community is also raising £150,000 for the same purpose, while developers have access to unlimited funds demanded from consumers. Will my right hon. Friend tell us how this can possibly be fair?

[Mr Davey]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s question. He will understand that planning issues and support for local communities and local authorities are matters for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, and in my hon. Friend’s constituency for people in the Welsh Assembly Government, no doubt, but he makes a fair point. One reason why we have made the call for evidence on how local communities can benefit is to ensure that developers come forward and engage with local communities far better and in a less adversarial way than we have seen in some cases.