Site last updated on 05 August 2007

7:12 AM

Watch Out: Another Consultation Document About!

The ERYC is once again consulting on renewable energy matters. It has recently published an Interim Planning Document, (IPD), entitled “Planning for Renewable Energy Developments” which sets out the Council’s approach to planning for future renewable energy development in the East Riding. The public is invited to comment and can do so but the deadline for any response is 17th December 2008.

This document comes in two parts, the second of which consist of appendices to the first. Each of the two parts to this document is about 60 pages long and both are easily read. Taken together, these two documents set out the criteria by which the ERYC will judge the suitability of future applications for wind-farm or biomass developments submitted to them for planning approval. Implicitly, I think, they suggest the grounds by which such applications to the ERYC might be approved or rejected by it. The document describes not only the constraints on future renewable energy development that the ERYC would like to see acknowledged by the industry, but also outlines the background legislative context, operative at national and regional level and under continuing review, within which the ERYC will have to make its decisions. The constraints on development that are discussed include, Biodiversity, Habitats, Nature and Heritage Conservation as well as Landscape Character and Sensitivity and other issues to do with nearby air-fields and radar. Most of this information appears in Volume 2 of the document, (the Appendices), wherein a number of very helpful maps are also provided so that you can see how, in each case, these constraints distribute themselves across the East Riding, (and therefore, I suppose, how vulnerable or not you could be to near-by wind-farm development).

Also published, and intended to be read alongside the above, there is a Sustainability Appraisal / Strategic Environmental Assessment which is 200 pages long. This document examines the IPD and attempts to predict the likely effect of its implementation on the people and environments of the East Riding. The SA/SEA also makes recommendations to improve the IPD. I can’t pretend to have read this document yet but I don’t doubt that I should, (so I hope that I will).

All these documents are available at every Council Customer Service Centre and at libraries. These documents can be also be downloaded from the ERYC website at http://www.eastriding.gov.uk/planning/ldf/ where you will find the Environment and Planning/LDF section of the website and can look in Current Consultations and click on “Planning for Renewable Developments-Draft Interim Planning Document”. Besides the documents, there is a downloadable response form which you may use, (to have your say), and the address is given to which it should be sent. Alternatively, you may send your comments by e-mail to stephanie.major@eastriding.gov.uk or by post to Stephanie Major, planning officer, Forward Planning Unit, County Hall, Beverley, HU17 9BA. Please remember that the deadline for comments is 17th December.

Whether you comment or not, I think these documents provide an invaluable guide to ERYC thinking on the renewable energy future of the East Riding. If you are concerned about the impact that these technologies might have, for your locality and farther afield within the county, you should ensure that you acquire your copies.

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Mission Statement

Wolds WindFarm Opposition has been formed to continually develop, prepare, present and implement strategies and tactics to oppose the current and any subsequent planned developments of a windfarm between the villages of Skerne, Hutton, Cranswick and Watton.

A YORKSHIRE WATER nature reserve can boast another feather in its cap after the sighting of a rare great white egret this week. *

Fewer than 100 of the birds have been recorded in the UK, all of them vagrants lost on their way to their normal summer breeding grounds in eastern and central Europe.

* The site at Top Hill Low is on land adjacent to the proposed Rotsea Wind Farm.

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THE EGRET HAS LANDED !