In October – November, 2019. You participated in a survey of the visual impacts of British wind farms. You indicated that you would be interested to see a summary of the results of the survey.
Key findings from the survey were:
· Compared with the English and Welsh, Scottish respondents gave the highest ratings of scenes without wind farms and the lowest ratings of scenes with wind farms.
· Of the English respondents, 63% found wind farms acceptable, but in Wales the figure was 49% and in Scotland, 34%. This suggests that the threshold of acceptability of wind farms has been passed in Scotland and is approaching it for Wales.
· The highest proportion opposed to wind farms was in north and south Scotland, both 55%, followed by south Wales, 50%, and north Wales, 43%.
· While 70% of local councillors and 61% of country councillors strongly supported wind farms, only 41% of staff were in favour.
· While 12% of local councillors and 7% of country councillors opposed wind farms, 31% of staff opposed them.
· While both local and county councillors generally found wind farms acceptable, many of staff rated the wind farms as very unacceptable; 33% of the staff found them very unacceptable compared with 11% of county councillors and 9% of local councillors.
· The respondent’s attitudes towards wind farms, whether positive or negative, shaped their ratings of scenes with and without wind farms. Those opposed to wind farms rated scenes without them the highest and scenes with wind farms, the lowest, a difference in ratings of nearly 6. Conversely for those in favour of wind farms, the difference in rating was only 0.6. This conclusively showed that attitudes affect ratings.
· Attitudes toward wind farms also shaped their acceptability by respondents, with those in favour finding most wind farms acceptable while those against them finding virtually all wind farms unacceptable.
Attached is a summary of the survey. The complete report is available at my website:
Thank you for your participation in the survey and I hope you find the results useful in your work on your Council.
Dr Andrew Lothian
Scenic Solutions
17 March, 2020
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