Mike Hall MP submission to the public inquiry on the Aston Grange wind farm planning appeal

I am the Member of Parliament for Weaver Vale.

I have been contacted directly by a significant number of constituents who are opposed to the plans to erect four 125 metre high wind turbines at Aston Grange Farm.

Vale Royal Borough Council has rejected the Tegni Cymru Cyf wind farm planning application. I support that refusal and oppose the appeal by Tegni Cymru Cyf at this public inquiry.

The site for the proposed four 125 metre high wind turbines is in the green belt as defined by the Vale Royal Borough Council Local Plan 1st Review. The Aston Grange Farm site is in the green belt as defined by all the previous planning regimes covering the area.

The whole purpose of defining the green belt is to recognise which parts of the area covered by Vale Royal Borough Council should be designated as such and protected from development.

Aston Grange Farm is a green field site, in the defined green belt. The due process of designating Aston Grange Farm as green belt has been thoroughly applied by Vale Royal Borough Council and widely consulted upon. That process, rightly confirmed the green belt status of the site which should be protected from being developed.
The erection of four massive 125 metre high wind turbines would completely despoil this beautiful area of open green space. In would physically destroy an integral part of the green belt.

If this planning appeal is permitted it would totally undermine the integrity of the Vale Royal Borough Council Local Pan 1st Review green belt policy.

Aston Grange is also an integral part of the Weaver Valley, and Weaver Valley Regional Park and has immense visual amenity value. The Vale Royal Borough Council Local Plan 1st Review confirms the value of the visual amenity of the area by designating it as one of special value.

The erection of the four massive 125 metre high wind turbines would completely dominate the local landscape. The sheer size of the four 125 metre high wind turbines would mean they would be visible for miles around.

Four turbines of this massive size would be a huge blot on the landscape of the Weaver Valley ruining the view across one of the most outstanding areas of natural beauty in Cheshire.

The Aston Grange area attracts visitors from far and wide who come to walk and enjoy the views of the beautiful countryside. The construction of the four massive wind turbines, which will completely dominate the area and be totally obtrusive, will mean a valuable part of the green belt will no longer attract those visitors.

This would have an adverse effect on tourism in the area.

The Aston Grange Farm site is a natural habitat for wild life, birds and bats. The proposed wind farm will destroy that habitat developed over many years and force the displacement of the wild life and birds.

It is well established that wind farms create noise. The Weaver Valley is a very quiet and peaceful area not adversely affected by noise from such things as motorways or industrial developments. Any noise generated by these four massive wind turbines will have a detrimental affect on the amenity of the area.

A number of constituents have raised with me their concerns about the impact of the four massive wind turbines on the safety zones of the gas pipe line, the mainline railway, Liverpool John Lennon Airport and Manchester Airport.

To understand the scale of this proposed development you have to be able to imagine one 50 metre Olympic size swimming pool stood on its end, add another 50 metre Olympic pool on top, then add another half on top of that. That is how tall each one of the four proposed wind turbines will be.

If this development is permitted to go ahead we will lose an area of outstanding natural beauty, it will despoil the immense visual amenity of the Weaver Valley, it will ruin a natural wild life and bird habitat and it will bring a potential noise nuisance to a currently very quiet and peaceful area.

This proposed development will compromise several important safety buffer zones. It will totally undermine the green belt policy and it will destroy an extremely important part of the local green belt which will be lost forever.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the proposal to erect four massive 125 metre high wind turbines on the Aston Grange Farm is totally and utterly out of character with the area.

I now want to address the claim by the developers that the generation of energy from the proposed four wind turbines wind provides sufficient justification for breaching the local green belt policy.

In an attempt to understand the position of the proposed developer I wrote on 9th October 2006 to Tegni Cymru Cyf asking for a copy of the data collected by Dulas Ltd showing the amount of electricity that the four wind turbines are predicted to generate in a full year of operation. The reply I received from the Managing Director Mr Huw Smallwood told me the information I requested was, ‘of a commercial nature and therefore we are unable to release the information’.

I appreciate that the combined potential maximum output of the four wind turbines is 12 mega watts of electricity. This a minuscule amount of power compared with 2000 mega watts of electricity produced at Fiddlers Ferry Power Station. However, the refusal of Tegni Cymru to produce the data from the anemometer readings tells me the actual amount of power these four massive wind turbines will actual produce will be significantly less than the maximum 12 mega watts.

It is my view that had the data collected by Dulas Ltd at Aston Grange confirmed that these four massive turbines would produce anywhere near 12 mega watts of power per year the data would have been published.

Policy Planning Statement 22 sets the reasons why wind turbine applications in the green belt can be rejected.

PPS 22 does not say that under every circumstance each planning application to build wind turbines in the designated green belt shall be permitted regardless of local considerations.

PPS 22 sets out conditions under which local planning authorities can reject such applications if they are proposed for green belt sites.

PPS 22 contains the specific circumstances where the Government can intervene where Local Authorities are applying constraints on renewable energy proposals that are too great or have been poorly justified. In this case the Government has not intervened. The Government has not told Vale Royal Borough Council they are applying constraints that are too great or that their proposals have been poorly justified.

PPS 22 recognises that proposals to erect wind farm turbines, in the green belt, will be seen as inappropriate development.

PPS 22 goes onto state in respect of any wind farm turbine development in the green belt that ‘careful consideration will therefore have to given to the visual impact of projects, and developers will need to demonstrate very special circumstances that clearly outweigh any harm by reason of inappropriateness and any other harm if projects are to proceed.

Tegni Cymru has not been able to demonstrate any circumstances, let alone very special circumstances, to justify proposals that would mitigate such a massive intrusion into the local green belt.

The Government has rightly set out its policy regarding renewable energy and the location of wind farms.

The Government has also made it very clear that decisions on whether or not to give permission for wind farms remains to be taken locally by local planning authorities.

In this case Vale Royal Borough Council was right to say that the proposal to erect four massive wind turbines in the Weaver Valley Park Green Belt did not demonstrate the very special circumstances envisaged by PPS 22 and should therefore be refused.

Vale Royal Borough Council using its planning powers properly has refused this application because it breaches a long established policy of protecting the green belt policy.

I have received a significant amount of objections from my constituents to the proposals for the wind farm. All of these constituents want to keep the sanctity of the green belt. All of them want to preserve the Weaver Valley and the Weaver Valley Park. None of them have been persuaded that the small amount of energy that maybe produced by the massive four wind turbines mitigates the permanent destruction of the green belt.

I therefore urge that this appeal be rejected and the integrity of the status of the Weaver Valley as green belt be preserved against development.