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Lifting of wind farm restrictions welcomed
ENERGY experts at Carter Jonas in Peterborough have welcomed the lifting of a policy restriction against wind farm development in and around Oundle and Thrapston and nearby rural locations.
ENERGY experts at Carter Jonas in Peterborough have welcomed the lifting of a policy restriction against wind farm development in and around Oundle and Thrapston and nearby rural locations.For some time now, the energy team specialists have been urging local authorities to accommodate national targets for renewable energy when it comes to local planning policies and to ensure that development is appropriate in terms of location and being sustainable.
So the fact that a planning inspector has instructed East Northamptonshire Council to delete a restriction on wind farms in its Rural North, Oundle and Thrapston Plan, has reinforced Carter Jonas’s position.
The East Northamptonshire Council plan currently states that wind farms will only be acceptable under the set criteria that turbines must not “subdue or disrupt the landscape”.
As it stands, this would mean that any planning application for a wind farm would have to meet all the criteria to be successful. The planning inspector vetoed the policy because it fails to comply with national climate change and renewables guidance and, while not amounting to a ban, it set many hurdles.
The fact that the inspector measured the robustness of the local policy against a national framework is something which has impressed the Carter Jonas energy team which has been calling for the planning system to be streamlined in support of the renewable energy sector.
Andrew Watkin, who heads the firm’s energy team in Peterborough, said: “Nobody is saying that local considerations should not be taken into account.
“But, in the light of this decision in East Northamptonshire, it appears the robustness of local policies – and the political motivation behind them – will be measured by planning inspectors against the wider, national picture which includes a range of legally binding targets for reducing CO2 emissions and central policies geared towards supporting the business of renewable energy.”
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Weather for Peterborough
Saturday 04 February 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: -1 C to 2 C
Wind Speed: 20 mph
Wind direction: South
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: -1 C to 4 C
Wind Speed: 9 mph
Wind direction: West
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