Park officer opposes windfarm outside Dales, but ruining view across borders
An officer from the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority is to attend a meeting in Cumbria later this month to oppose a proposed wind farm which would be visible from inside its boundary.
South Lakeland District Council has consulted the Dales National Park about an application for six 328ft tall wind turbines, a control room, anemometer mast and tracks on 100 acres of land east of Crosslands Farm, Old Hutton, Kendal.
The turbines would be on land between 688ft and 918ft high on a low line of hills between the M6 and A683 five miles south east of Kendal, less than 2.5 miles outside the National Park boundary.
The area between the Yorkshire Dales and Lake District National Parks is under review and could be absorbed within extended park boundaries.
Yorkshire Dales National Park’s Deputy Head of Planning, Andrew McCullagh, believes the proposed Armistead windfarm, together with the existing Lambrigg windfarm, would have a “major disruptive visual impact”.
The Dales National Park Authority agreed in May to ask South Lakeland District Council to defer determination of the Armistead application until “serious shortcomings” in the applicant’s Environmental Statement had been addressed.
The authority also asked the District Council to have special regard to the fact that the windfarm would have a serious impact on the character and setting of areas which were of such high landscape quality that they were being considered for designation as extensions to the Dales National Park.
Mr McCullagh’s report has prompted a response from Martyn Earle, of Banks Renewables Ltd, of Tow Law, County Durham, who said: “No turbines forming part of the proposal are sited either within the National Park or within the proposed area of search for extension to the National Park indicated by the Alison Farmer report.”
But in his latest report to the National Park Planning Committee, Mr McCullagh addresses information submitted by the applicants to South Lakeland Council.
He said: “The written assessments do not succeed in allaying fears that the proposed wind farm, both by itself and in combination with the existing Lambrigg wind farm, would have a major disruptive visual impact in westerly views from within the National Park.”
He added: “The assessment of the magnitude of change to the views from Calf Top and Holme Fell as ‘low’ and the categorisation of both the existing and proposed wind farms as ‘minor features in the landscape’ are both serious misrepresentations.”
By Brian Dooks
8 October 2008
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