Mike Wade
A local petition that was used to back a controversial wind farm in
Sutherland was hijacked by people from Doncaster, Dunfermline and
Fraserburgh who had no apparent connection with the area, The Times has
learnt.
Opposition politicians have now demanded that the Scottish government
reconsider its decision to approve the 22-turbine Creag Riabhach
development, since local support for the project was one of the main
arguments ministers relied on in giving it the go-ahead.
The wind farm is on the Altnaharra estate, owned by Jim Gray, 82, a
supporter of the SNP and the founder of the Gray & Adams transport company,
in Fraserburgh. Gray & Adams also has branches in Dunfermline and Doncaster.
Creag Riabhach was approved six weeks ago by Paul Wheelhouse, the business,
innovation and energy minister, despite being partially located on wild land.
It is the first wind farm to have been approved in a designated wild land
area since the Scottish government adopted a revised planning framework in
2014. The new rules are designed to protect the country’s most rugged and
beautiful landscapes, but Mr Wheelhouse justified his contentious decision
by saying the project had “popular support from the local community council
and public alike”.
Analysis of an Altnaharra community petition in support of the development
showed that local approval was insignificant compared to blocs of support
in other places, all of them hundreds of miles away from the proposed site
of the turbines.
Lodged with the government’s Energy Consents Unit, the petition shows that
166 people supporting the wind farm were registered at postcodes in
Fraserburgh, where Gray & Adams has its headquarters, and nearby Peterhead.
These towns are more than 160 miles from the wind farm site.
Support for the wind farm in post-code area IV27, including Altnaharra and
Tongue, 16 miles away, amounted to 49 people, although only 11 adults are
thought to live permanently in the village of Altnaharra itself.
Significant support came from further afield. According to their
post-codes, a total of 53 people from Doncaster and South Yorkshire signed
up in favour of Creag Riabhach, along with 34 from Fife. The Gray & Adams
branch in Doncaster is 460 miles from the wind farm, and its branch in
Dunfermline is 207 miles away.
A large proportion of support for the development was registered over a
48-hour period in mid-February. A further 56 people who were pro-wind farm
did not indicate their address, and eight registered from overseas.
In Altnaharra village not everyone supported the wind farm. “Most people
owe their jobs to the estate, so they won’t say anything against the wind
farm,” said one resident who opposes the turbines but asked not to be named.
Tim Philpot, a director of Creag Ria-bhach Wind Farm and an employee of
Gray & Adams, said he could not ex-plain the figures on the petition, which
showed huge blocs of support from places associated with the company.
“There were many individual letters in support from locals, and equally
there were letters of objection that didn’t come from residents of the
im-mediate area,” Mr Philpot said. “You could draw conclusions on either
side of the argument.”
As well as owning the Altnaharra estate, Mr Gray and other members of his
family and senior employees are listed as directors of Creag Riabhach Wind
Farm Limited. The businessman enthusiastically supported Eilidh Whiteford
when she sought re-election SNP MP for Banff & Buchan.
“Her publicity promoted Mr Gray as a “key” northeast business leader.
Murdo Fraser, the shadow finance, secretary, called for the application to
be reassessed by government.
“Unless we are to believe that the good people of Doncaster have an usual
interest in wind farms in Sutherland, it appears that support for this
controversial development has been manufactured by the very firm which
wants to build it,” Mr Fraser said. “We know the SNP has driven through
wind farms without the support of many local communities across Scotland.
The ministers who agreed to these plans now have some very serious
explaining to do about whether due process has been followed.”
Each of Creag Riabhach’s turbines is 80 metres high with maximum generating
capacity of 3.3MW. Together they have the potential to power 36,000 homes.
For many years projects on this scale promised huge profits for wind farm
companies because of govern-ment subsidies. Landowners too could expect to
be paid 5-6 per cent of the annual turnover of wind farms, or around
£40,000 a year for each large 3MW turbine.
A fraction of the profits are usually shared out through “community
benefit” initiatives, in which developers pay local villages affected by a
wind farm. At Creag Riabhach, the local fund would be “for the benefit of
any resident or local business within the area of Alt-naharra” and was
estimated at £181,500 a year, or more than £4.5 million over the 25-year
operational life of the wind farm, according to the application.
Mr Philpot insisted that work would begin in 2018, with the wind farm
likely to feed the national grid in 2020, although he conceded that
“without subsidy, the whole market has been turned on its head”. The Times
made repeated attempts to contact Mr Gray through his company, but he was
unavailable. The Scottish government said: “The application for Creag
Riabhach re-ceived strong support from the local community council in
Altnaharra.”
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