Infrastructure Planning (Onshore Wind Generating Stations) Order 2016

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Monday 8th February 2016 Grand Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change and Wales Office (Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth) (Con)]

My Lords, I will set out the impact of the statutory instrument which I am bringing forward. This affirmative instrument seeks to amend Section 15 of the Planning Act 2008, removing the obligation in that Act to obtain consent from the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change to construct, extend or operate an onshore wind farm in England or Wales. To be clear, this provision relates only to proposed new wind farms with a capacity greater than 50 megawatts. Smaller wind farms, including those owned by the community, are already consented by the relevant local planning authority.

This change, alongside secondary legislation and proposed primary legislation in relation to the Electricity Act 1989, will have the effect of removing the requirements for planning consent to be obtained from the Secretary of State for the construction of new onshore wind farms. Instead, developers will need to apply for planning permission under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, where the primary decision-maker is the relevant local planning authority. This Government were elected with a clear commitment to give local people the final say on whether to have a wind farm in their area. These changes help deliver just that, as was stated in our manifesto.

The changes are further supported in England by the implementation of the Written Ministerial Statement outlined by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government on 18 June last year. The combined effect of the measures is to ensure that new onshore wind is consented to at local level and built only where local people have said they want it.

Finally, I remind the Committee of the support that the Government have received on this issue both in this House and during the Committee sittings in the other place which were held just last week. I should also be clear that the intention of this statutory instrument, and indeed of the statutory instrument already made to the Electricity Act 1989, is purely fully to implement the devolution of onshore wind-consenting powers to local authorities and away from Whitehall. The order does not change or affect the regime for town and country planning in either England or Wales.

Furthermore, once onshore wind-consenting powers are fully devolved to Wales, it will be for the Welsh Assembly and the Welsh Government to determine how new onshore wind farms in Wales are granted consent. On that basis, I beg to move.

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, asked about the national policy framework and whether sustainability was still important. Yes, it still is, although obviously within the context of local decision-making, which I am pleased he recognises as being important. He asked about the interrelationship between the local and the neighbourhood plans. The neighbourhood plan is discretionary, it is not as of right, and the local plan will prevail over the neighbourhood plan. It needs to take account of it but in the pecking order, as it were, the local plan will have the superior say. It will take account of the neighbourhood plan but is not obliged to follow it. The noble Lord also asked about wind farms of over 5 megawatts—I wonder whether he meant 50.

[Lord Teverson]

I meant over 50, I apologise.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

Not at all. I guessed that was what he meant but I just wanted to confirm that. Two developers were involved in discussions about the transition from the old scheme to the new scheme. That perhaps gives a flavour of the fact that it is not that many. I believe that the noble Lord also referred, as did the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, to the different regimes in relation to shale. In both, local involvement is key. We recognise that. It is right to say that there is talk about a new system for shale gas exploration. There is a difference when a new technology is being brought on but I reiterate that in both systems we consider a local dimension to the decision-making to be vital.

[Lord Teverson]

Actually, I liked the Minister’s first response, the global one. I thought that was very good.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

I am most grateful. I have mislaid the further questions from the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester. I am not sure whether I have covered everything. Here we are: the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, asked whether there was any move other than making local authorities responsible for these decisions rather than the Secretary of State. That is essentially true. There is an element of devolution to Wales as well but it just mirrors that in relation to the Welsh Government and Welsh Assembly. There is no other intention here. The noble Lord also referred to the fact that this is coupled with what is now Clause 78 of the Energy Bill—we have lost a clause somewhere along the way—he is absolutely right on that. With that, I commend the order to the Committee.