Site last updated on 05 August 2007
7:12 AM
PLEASE WATCH OUT: CONSULTATION DOCUMENT ABOUT
You may be unaware of this, but the ERYC would like as many people as possible to have their say on how they would like the East Riding to Develop. To that end, they have issued a Consultation Document entitled “Core Strategy – Issues and Options”. It is 116 pages long and you can read the document in libraries, Customer Service Centres and on the ERYC website. Following this Issues and Options consultation, the ERYC will consider the responses and start to work on a “Preferred Options” paper which is due to be published in March/April 2009. This will then inform the “Core Strategy”, which is of particular importance since it is intended to provide an over-arching strategic planning framework for the East Riding, and which will be one among a number of documents for which it will set the context and which will come together to make up the East Riding Local Development Framework The Local Development Framework (LDF), once completed will replace the existing plans prepared under the old planning system, including the Joint Structure Plan for Hull and East Riding, and the four Local Plans that relate to the former boroughs of Beverley, Boothferry, East Yorkshire and Holderness.
The “Core Strategy – Issues and Options” consultation document is therefore something you should take heed of, since it is probably your best or only chance to significantly influence ERYC planning policy. To quote the document itself: “This is your chance to help us decide which is the best way to manage the growth of the East Riding over the next 15 – 20 years”. There is no mention of another chance in the next 15 – 20 years.
You can download a copy of the document by going to the ERYC website at www.eastriding.gov.uk/planning/ldf and then click on Core Strategy. Alternatively, you can read the document in libraries or Customer Service Centres, (listed at the website address above).
Having read the document, (as well as the shorter 40 page Sustainability Appraisal available at the same website address and which “should be read alongside”), you should consider yourself consulted. However, you have only until 13th June 2008 to respond to it. How can you do this? Well, you can respond using the on-line interactive document version, at the same website address. But if you wish to do this, you will have to get registered first. Perhaps more easily you can complete the “Have Your Say Questionnaire which can be downloaded as a printable PDF version to return by post or an MS word version to return by e-mail. I’m always a little anxious that when answering questionnaires you can find yourself dancing to someone else’s agenda. However, this questionnaire does provide space for personal opinions, usually under the heading “Any Other Comments”. The Wind-Farm related Questions are PE-9, PE-10 and PE-11. But why not write your own letter. Presumably you can use the contact details offered on page 2 of “Core Strategy – Issues and Options” which lists a postal address, LDF Policy, East Riding of Yorkshire Council, County Hall, Beverley, HU17 9BA, a telephone number, 01482 391750, and an e-mail address, forward.planning@eastriding.gov.uk (but watch out for the dots).
Our organisation, the WWFO, was formed in response to the proposal, first mooted about 2 years ago now, to site a wind-farm at Rotsea. We have been waiting for the developers to submit a planning application to the ERYC which so far they have not done. Nevertheless, we are aware of what has been so far proposed and it has been our aim to maintain public awareness of that in anticipation of the application’s deposition with the council and the very short period available thereafter for a public response.
For us, with the arrival of “Core Strategy – Issues and Options” the goal posts have moved somewhat. It may turn out that after June 13th public influence over particular wind-farm applications will be much less or not at all. Once the Core Strategy, already legitimised by a public consultation, has been decided, whether you live with wind-farms or not is unlikely to remain a matter for your opinion.
It is our belief that, whatever its contents, the ERYC intend the greatest emphasis in the LDF to be on Housing and Renewable Energy Capacity. Housing policy, one imagines, will be the major concern for every council in England and Wales. And “Wind-power is widely cited as the primary contributor of renewable energy to meet the regional targets and the East Riding is identified as being one of two authorities with considerable potential for exploiting this resource”, (CS-I&O 6.73).
Our approach in these circumstances – with the publication of “Core Strategy-Issues and Options” and the period for consultation and response associated with it – is threefold.
1). To make you aware of the document “Core Strategy – Issues and Options” and how to access it and respond to it within the time limits set by the ERYC.
2). To produce a document of our own in response: “Core Strategy – Issues and Options: Riverland – Amenity, Biodiversity and Proximity.” This document places our aspirations for our vicinity of the River Hull in a broader context by making common cause with the ERYC’s refusal of the planning permission for a wind-farm at Routh, (appeal against which is due to be heard in July). How we have done this you can read for yourself. In the second part of our document we make our case: the first part however, attempts to give a broad account of the CS-I&O document so that those of you who support our ideas but do not have time to read the CS-I&O in full or at all, can at least have some idea of its contents and be helped, (hopefully), to make a more relevant response to the Council’s professed interest in your opinion. The first and second parts of our document are clearly marked so that you can skip the first part if you wish I can’t pretend however, that our document reflects the CS-I&O document in anything but a very potted sense nor has it necessarily, with utmost accuracy, unpicked the planning process from all its ravelled intertwining. We do advise you to read the original documents. But do please note that our approach is not a matter of mere expediency and a response to changing circumstances. I have myself written two letters of objection to the Routh wind-farm application and both of them covered much the same ground and both were written in the same spirit as the present document: (the second of these was illustrated and themed according to the first part of the article “Nature and Freedom” which can be accessed as indicated below).
3). To release a new set of articles and imagery relevant to our original concern with the proposal at Rotsea. For technical reasons this material will appear on a separate page on the website page. To access it please click here. Actually, with the exception of the animations at the end, which relate more specifically to the Rotsea proposal, this material has more general themes at heart.
Of course, the earlier material elsewhere on our website remains as relevant as ever.
Please take a look.
One last thing: We have been advised that when responding to the Council’s CS-I&O document you can make reference to this website, more or less as specifically as you like. If you agree find that you agree with something we have said why not say so. Why not get the planners to look at this website and at what it says and shows
For more information please contact us using the form below.
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.
For more on this story click here
THE EGRET HAS LANDED !