Energy: Onshore Wind Farming

Lord Walton of Detchant Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Walton of Detchant (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, am most grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, for enabling us to have this debate. I am a proud Northumbrian. I live in Belford, at the heart of some of the lovely Northumbrian countryside. I am also a past captain and chairman, and now president, of Bamburgh Castle Golf Club, which was described by a national newspaper some years ago as arguably the most scenically beautiful golf club in the United Kingdom.

Looking down from the top of that course, one can see the grandeur of Bamburgh Castle and out to sea the wonderful bird sanctuary of the Farne Islands, where St Aidan spent some time as a hermit, and even beyond that to Longstone Lighthouse, made famous by the exploits of Grace Darling. To the left of that are Holy Island and Lindisfarne, with the priory that was one of the cradles of the development of Christianity in northern England. There is also a lovely castle designed and built by the Lutyens family, and a wonderful walled garden designed by Gertrude Jekyll. If one then turns to the west, one can look at St Cuthbert’s Way and St Cuthbert’s Cave, where the monks carried Cuthbert’s body from Holy Island on its way to Durham Cathedral. Beyond that is Ros Hill, where Earl Grey sat when he was Foreign Secretary and looked at his land that lay all around him and at the timeless beauty of Northumbria, which he adored.

However, if one now looks down to the south, there are 24 rotating monsters at Wandylaw and Middlemoor. Their approval by the planning authority as the result of an appeal strikes me as amounting to arrant environmental vandalism. They have destroyed the views of some of the loveliest countryside in Britain. As others have said, this is crucial because Northumberland has borne more than its fair share of these developments. I admit that the past captain of Bamburgh golf club once said that it is not windy at Bamburgh when the ball will stay on the peg on the 15th tee. We have some wind, but that does not justify the desecration of these views and of these important cradles of Christianity, which have been damaged by this development.

There was recently a proposal to put up a whole series more of these wind farms at Belford Burn. Happily, the county council planning committee rejected this application. There were 500 letters of opposition from people in the local community, and five letters in support. However, it is probable that, again, this particular application may be subject to appeal. One of the problems in Northumberland is that more appeals on applications for wind farm development have been allowed than in any other county in England.

I invite the Minister to draw to the attention of the inspectors the clear recommendation made last year by the Government that, when considering planning applications, more account must be taken of the views of the local community. The local community in Northumberland is implacably opposed, not to wind farms on brownfield sites or where they do no great damage to the environment, but to those which damage the untold beauty of a wonderful piece of scenery.