December 30, 2011
Scotland

Campaign group backs councillor’s call for Fife to stop and think about its windfarm future

By Dave Lord, The Courier, www.thecourier.co.uk 29 December 2011

Calls for a moratorium on wind turbine applications in Fife have been backed by a campaign group.

Members of the Clatto Landscape Protection Group (CLPG) have branded the number of proposals in the pipeline as ”frightening”.

Earlier this month Fife Council’s opposition leader Alex Rowley wrote to local authority chiefs, demanding an investigation into the situation (link).

He insisted no more applications should be approved until a ”strategic framework” for such developments is put in place. Mr Rowley also called for a ”community-led” discussion on the issue.

Now members of CLPG – currently battling proposals for two windfarms in Fife – have backed the senior councillor’s calls.

Group chairman Greg Brown said: ”The number of applications in the pipeline now is frightening. A pause is definitely needed to rethink things.”

Mr Brown warned that mistakes had already been made.

”In a recent decision to allow eight giant turbines to be built at Earlseat, the council’s planning committee showed scant regard for the interests of several communities very close by.

”It poses a horrendous prospect for many communities round Fife, when planning safeguards are virtually ignored like this.”

Mr Brown said CLPG was one of a growing number of community groups in Fife resisting pressure to accept ”industrial scale” turbines on their doorsteps.

”It is not only residential amenity that is threatened in Fife,” he continued. ”It is the landscape, environment and our vitally important tourist industry.”

CLPG members fear systemic failures in the planning process could ultimately have a devastating impact on Scotland.

”There is no doubt that the extensive subsidies for onshore wind attracts ‘get-rich-quick’ developers,” Mr Brown said. ”They often care nothing for the cost to local communities, nor do they care for the fuel poverty problems exacerbated because the subsidies come form our electricity bills.

”We need a proper community input into what is going on and not the lip- service experienced so far.”

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2011/12/30/campaign-group-backs-councillors-call-for-fife-to-stop-and-think-about-its-windfarm-future/