Press Release

Goodwill payments - Do they benefit communities or bring planning into disrepute?

8 October 2008

A growing number of local communities across England are being drawn in to accepting offers of ‘goodwill payments’ from wind farm developers. Countryside campaigners CPRE are today calling on the Government to take action to stop this practice from bringing the planning system into disrepute.

This call is backed by a new survey of this growing practice issued today. CPRE has found that:

· the sums involved are a fraction of the amount that the developers are making from the public, as electricity consumers, in subsidies;

· the payments are often used for purposes such as lunch clubs and sports pitches, which bear no relation to providing much-needed renewable energy; and

·local authority planners have little or no oversight of these payments.