You may remember that the Scottish Government published Investing in Planning – a consultation on resourcing Scotland’s planning system which responds to current resourcing challenges in planning. As requested in our Petition to the Scottish Parliament, (Increase the ability of communities to influence planning decisions for onshore wind farms) it invited stakeholder views on whether the current threshold of 50 megawatts (MW) which determines the requirement for consent from the Scottish Ministers for the construction, extension or operation of an electricity generating station, should be changed to allow planning authorities to determine more applications for electricity generating stations, such as on-shore windfarms. Thanks to everyone who responded.
The Summary of Findings was published today and Question 28 “Should the current threshold of 50MW for applications for electricity generation which are to be determined by authorities be altered?” was supported by all respondent categories except Development, Property & Land Management Sector & Agents. One of the reasons being “potential blocking of development in local authority areas where there is already a bias against wind farm development”.
The majority of respondents from the Planning Authorities, Communities and Individuals, and Third Sector groups were in favour of the threshold being increased. Reasons for this included greater local autonomy and community involvement in decision making.
Here is a list of the Councils which responded:
-
Aberdeen City Council
-
Aberdeenshire Council
-
Argyll and Bute Council
-
City of Edinburgh Council
-
Comhairle nan Eilean Siar
-
Dumfries & Galloway Council
-
East Ayrshire Council
-
East Dunbartonshire Council
-
East Renfrewshire Council
-
Fife Council
-
Glasgow City Council
-
Local Aquaculture Authorities Group
-
Moray Council
-
North Lanarkshire Council
-
Renfrewshire Council
-
Scottish Borders Council
-
Shetland Islands Council
-
Stirling Council
-
The Highland Council
-
West Dunbartonshire Council
-
West Lothian Council
-
3 planning authorities who did not want their response to be published
We will now have to wait until the final draft is published at the beginning of next year to find out if we have been successful.
0 Comments