by Edwin Lawrence,

More than 3000 letters of objection were this week officially lodged
against one of five proposed windfarms around Straiton.

And Save Straiton for Scotland chairman Bill Steven personally delivered
the objections to the Scottish Government’s Energy Consents Unit in Glasgow.

The SSfS website this week proclaims: “Let’s pull together for this last
stretch and kick this ridiculous planning application straight back to
those greedy investors in London and Switzerland and show them we mean
business.”

The campaign has pulled out all the stops to provide detailed responses to
what it calls an ‘inappropriate, invasive and unacceptable’ bid for 25 turbines

Bill Steven said: “Our objection document is a robust, powerful and
revealing insight in to how inappropriate the Linfairn application is.

“And it covers the key areas around planning, landscape assessment, noise
and tourism, as well as a section focusing on the developer WilloWind.”

SSfS reckons the company has shown ‘a blatant and continual disregard of
guidelines’ on community engagement. And it points to ‘clear
misrepresentations made by WilloWind’.

Mr Steven said: “They claimed to have listened to the public and reduced
the number of turbines from 29 to 25. But their original scoping document
was for 25 – so there’s no reduction.

“WilloWind also claims to be a windfarm operator, without ever having
operated a single turbine.”

Mr Steven said WilloWind chief executive Martin Davie treated community
concerns with ‘complete disdain’ at a consultation meeting in January.

He added: “He belittled those with genuine concerns, laughed at some of the
points raised, was extremely rude to others and reduced some local
residents to tears.”

SSfS believes Linfairn should have been two separate applications, as the
126.5 metre-high turbines are in two distinct groupings.

The campaign claims WilloWind has ‘sidestepped’ other Government policies
on planning, landscape and noise.

Mr Steven said: “We’ve had ample opportunity to judge WilloWind’s standard
of community engagement and consultation.

“And they simply don’t match up to the other developers, who while desiring
the same outcome as WilloWind, have on the whole at least handled
themselves with the professionalism that you would expect in these
circumstances.”

No fewer than eight elected representative, from all the main politcal
parties, agree with SSfS that the Linfairn development is ‘totally
inappropriate’ – and should be refused.

Meanwhile, WilloWind insists the project will bring a range of benefits to
the area, from new jobs to commercial opportunities, as well as long-term
community benefits during the life of the windfarm.

And the company claims: “We have gone to great lengths to respond to the
issues raised with us about this development, and have included a number of
measures in our application which we believe fully address them.”


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