Chamber and committees

John Chapman submission of 12 June 2021

PE1864/SS - Increase the ability of communities to influence planning decisions for onshore windfarms

I write in support of the above petition as I have been a close observer/resident in this area of public planning since 2003.

The fundamental point is that only in Scotland is there provision for central government to override any local plan, and only developers can appeal, thus excluding democratically elected local councils or individuals from exerting any real influence on decisions made. This issue is one of extreme concern because of the large numbers of schemes being openly encouraged by the Scottish Government and being approved in specific areas of Scotland which affects the quality of life of many families. This outcome negates all the assurances by the Scottish Government in the past that individual citizens have an entitlement to living peacefully in their homeland.

The fact that UK citizens in England enjoy the right to have such schemes (of whatever size) determined on the basis of local plans means that the people of Scotland are now subjected to a system without any significant hope of appeal. This denies any equality of treatment within the wider national society. A local windfarm erected in 2018 after many extended and locally supported efforts at opposition since 2003 was given conditional approval, but all efforts to discover if these conditions were implemented have been frustrated under Covid restrictions. It is impossible to discover if conditions laid down by the Scottish Government have been implemented. The planning system is subservient to the financial framework in place, a fact which is demonstrated most clearly by the resort of the developer to the system of 'community benefit' that is effectively a ‘bribe’ to provide inducement for support. This situation was explicitly forbidden under the planning system in the past and is clearly a means of loading the dice even more heavily than ever.

Under the rubric of 'climate change', the Scottish Government seeks to, in my opinion, justify its position of imposing its will on its own citizens at a time when very much larger states in the international system are ignoring calls for the abandonment of the use of fossil fuels on a huge scale. This reduces the level of Scottish 'leadership' to an almost infinitesimal amount by comparison, but no heed is taken of the irreversible damage to people, animals, ecology and environment that is overwhelmingly negative in terms of a technology that is far short of its theoretical ability to deliver energy, as can be seen against the actual capacity under Betz Law of only about 57% at most and zero if the wind fails to blow at an acceptable level.

Turbines require the incorporation of rare earth components which are toxic if released accidentally. They also produce levels of infrasound, inaudible to the human ear, but all the more damaging to people and animals.

The system is deeply destructive to the landscape and the blight will fall on younger generations as well as on current Scottish stakeholders. This is especially destructive in rural areas where the loss of amenities accompanying windfarms does almost nothing to compensate for losses to local economies where tourism, farming and horticulture are the prime sources of income. The right to roam in the Scottish countryside becomes wholly fatuous when so many thousands of wind turbines are being erected not just on the higher hills, but increasingly on lower slopes and equipped with ever larger turbines in what is inevitably a lost cause in the long run. The fatuity of such a policy is highlighted by the fact that a local hydroelectric system, capable of feeding electricity to over 90,000 homes, is now being brought into service only when windpower cannot be supplied to the Grid.

It makes no sense to rely on onshore windpower as the main basis of a carbon-free future. It already fuels sharp social divisions within communities and risks civil disturbance. Supporting this inadequate technology will surely be seen as yet one more tragedy in the long history of woe that has been imposed by office-holders on the mass of Scotland's people over many centuries.

The Scottish Government needs to rethink our future if it is to survive. If it fails to do so, the exodus of talented people from Scotland will be even more immense than occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries. I commend this petition to all sound-thinking members who understand the importance of sustaining the diversity of the many areas of our homeland and the need to think through what is best for all Scottish people.