November 10, 2011
England

Protesters aim for £50,000 fighting fund

Staffordshire Newsletter, www.staffordshirenewsletter.co.uk 10 November 2011

Determined residents have launched a £50,000 funding campaign to help their fight against a wind farm in the Stafford countryside.

Householders in Church Eaton, Wheaton Aston, High Onn and Blymhill are among those fighting plans for six 128-metre turbines at New House Farm, near Brineton.

The proposal was thrown out by South Staffordshire Council earlier this year but the applicant Wind Prospect has lodged an appeal.

A second planning application for an 80-metre anemometry mast to measure wind speeds was also thrown out by the council but Wind Prospect appealed and following a hearing in the summer the decision was overturned.

Residents, who formed the action group Stag(Stop Turbines Action Group), are now trying to raise money so they can hire experts, including a landscape architect, to help fight their case.

The first fund-raising event will be an auction at the Royal Oak in Church Eaton on November 19 at 8pm.

Spokesman Tony Lendon said: “We have heard that the appeal hearing is going to be in February so we don’t have much time really to raise the money.

“We have sent letters out to as many residents as possible and our aim is to raise the money so we can have the strongest team possible to fight the appeal. By January we will just have to see how much money we have got and if we haven’t raised the total we will just have to hire the people that we can afford.”

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2011/11/10/protesters-aim-for-50000-fighting-fund/