Mike Hulme – and early thorn in the side of the wind industry – has died.
Hulme rose to fame as a quiet determined voice of objection pitted against the idealistic Den Brook turbine developer Rachel Ruffles in a TV documentary. The documentary showed planners weighing up the arguments for and against wind, the objections focusing on amplitude modulation.
In 2006, West Devon Borough Council refused planning permission for the scheme, but RES appealed, and consent was granted in early 2007 following a public inquiry. Still concerned about noise issues, local residents the formed Den Brook Judicial Review Group which pursued a judicial review. This resulted in the inquiry decision being overturned, and a second public inquiry was held in October 2009, following which permission was once more granted, subject to a number of planning conditions. A second legal challenge was rejected in August 2010.
Hulme will be remembered as a classic case of an ordinary person taking on a well financed corporation and forcing it to make concessions. Those court cases ensured that the wind industry took noise objections seriously. By way of a tribute it is worth re-watching the trailer for Windfarm Wars on Youtube
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