I, along with many Stoke Park residents, attended the PfR consultation at Belstead Brook hotel on Monday to see the new positioning and proposed designs of turbines for Thorington.
They have finished analysing environmental data and are begininning their impact assessment for the planning application to Babergh Council.
There will be 2 turbines - one on Ipswich owned land, just slightly further back from the original site, and one on private land near Jimmys farm. Both fall under Babergh Council jurisdiction.
This is a small improvement to those in Stoke Park but not much consolation to all the residents who really just do not want this next to homes.
I spoke to the management team at length about positioning and residents concerns and of course they are only doing their job. they were extremely knowledgeable and tried very hard to alleviate peoples fears but I'm afraid not much has changed.
Pictures, showing how the turbines will look, were pinned up around the room but we couldnt fail to notice that none of them were at an angle that would truly show the turbines at their most hideous. All of the takes were, without exceptional, at a camera angle that implied the turbines would look much smaller but were partly hidden in dips. If they had mocked scenarios to show them to scale with nearby houses, we would have seen very different pictures!
They continue to state that the common concerns of flicker, noise, lower house prices are not a problem but we beg to differ.
Apparently Kessingland was awful yesterday and Peter Evans of SIT (Stop Ipswich Turbines) has invited people to go along today. That may not be possible but we can take his word on this. We now know that Kessingland residents are in despair.
Will we be able to convince Babergh planning that this is not what we want and give them sufficient evidence to help them reject this? We must try.
Ben Gummer and I have completed a survey which overwhelmingly states we do not want this and so we must put the new Localism Act to test.
Please continue to write to our Mps in Suffolk. All hands on Decks please.....
Nadia, thanks for this. Can you explain how we can 'test' the Localism Act in this instance. Secondly, if there have been changes to the original plans agreed between IBC and PfR can IBC now 'withdraw' from the deal? Thirdly, how can we influence the powers that be over the connection to Gusford such that they refuse to permit connection?
ReplyDeleteHi Brian. As IBC only signed an options agreement ie the details of the project are nothing to do with the contract.As you know it is Babergh that needs to agree or disagree with anything to do with planning. IBC signed an options lease that says, if PfR gets planning permission then they can lease the land off of IBC. There is not. Regarding the Localism Act, this purports to make decision making closer to the people, giving them more say, especially when it comes to planning issues. If there is this huge wave of opposition to the windfarm then surely this must be a test to see how the Localism Act will work. if 92% of residents do not get their wish, then I want to ask the question, How do we make this Act work for the people, if 92% is not enough to satisfy the Act? So a real test! Not sure about Gusford - it will be a stand alone decision so we need to look into what could get it refused on its own merits of works needed to connect the turbines up. Many thanks for your questions and see you soon.
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