Woore Wind Farm Inquiry

As the Wind Farm Inquiry in Woore goes into its third week, Audlem Online sent its Woore correspondent, minus a Kate Adie style flack jacket, to check on the long-running legal conflict. As reported on 6th May at the outset of the Inquiry, the proposal by Nuon UK Ltd to build seven 110m high turbines near Knighton is being examined only against tightly defined planning considerations.

The scene in the Victory Hall with the Inspector and every lawyer present surrounded by huge numbers of box files, expensively produced brochures packed with maps, diagrams and photographs, all testifies to the thousands of man (and woman) hours that have gone into gathering evidence for the Inquiry, all at huge expense.

Indeed, your correspondent could not help but reflect on the depressingly convoluted letter received by Mike Hill – reported on Audlem Online on Tuesday – from Mike O'Brien, the Energy Minister. This was in response to a request for £165,000 to build a technically sound hydro-scheme in the village. The Inquiry in Woore is costing far more money, almost certainly, in lawyers' fees than the hydro-scheme would have cost to build in total!

Yesterday, Michelle Bolger, a landscape architect and expert witness was quizzed for over three hours by counsel for the local residents and by Nuon's barrister. She argued that wind farms should only be located where the adverse effects can be addressed. She said the proposed location was a unique landscape in the region, not repeated elsewhere in Shropshire, Staffordshire or Cheshire.

The area proposed by Nuon for a wind farm is, she said, one of 'timbered pastures' rather than the large open landscapes the national guidance for wind farm locations recommends. Much of her evidence was based on long-established local 'Landscape Character Assessments', such as the one that is just being completed by the Audlem Parish Plan planning team.

If Audlem is ever pinpointed as the location for a wind farm or other major development in the future, an officially accepted LCA, such as the one about to be published, could be invaluable.

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