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Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee

Finlay Carson submission of 1 February 2022

PE1864/FFFFF - Increase the ability of communities to influence planning decisions for onshore windfarms

I wish to endorse the need for change in the determination of onshore wind farm applications and request that due consideration is given to the need for more weight being given to community opinion in final planning decisions at both Local Authority and Scottish Government levels.

I fear that ambitious climate change targets will result in more onshore windfarms applications being granted by default through the appeal process to Scottish Government, despite rejection by local authorities who have listened to local communities who have raised concerns relating to cumulative effect, power line infrastructure, and environmental and biodiversity damage.

These fears are further exasperated by examples where planning consent conditions not being monitored or indeed even considered requirements when the Scottish Government determine an appeal.

Currently some Local Authorities are being overwhelmed by large numbers of windfarm applications due to a lack of resources to complete application determination with-in the legal timescale and these applications are then referred to the Scottish Government for consideration, effectively bypassing local democracy. Councils are also struggling to provide ongoing environmental and construction monitoring during and following construction.

Not only is change required to allow for professional assistance to be offered to communities to assist them to engage with the planning process, financial assistance should be given to local authorities to enable them to determine applications with-in the allotted timescale and assist with costs of on-going monitoring conditions. The Scottish Government need to give proper consideration to community concerns and cumulative development when considering appeals and repowering applications, in one day alone, during December 2021, the Scottish Government consented to 5 windfarms in Scotland, surely this in not the way forward.

However, fair funding is just the start of empowering councils. We also need to ensure proper protections for local decision making. In 2019, four in ten planning decisions appealed to SNP ministers had their original decision from the council overturned. That means hundreds of developments going ahead on the instruction of an SNP Government in Edinburgh against the wishes of communities and local representatives across the country. We need to amend planning laws, so that the Scottish Government cannot overturn a local planning decision. This would ensure that major developments require engagement with communities and ensure that national infrastructure delivers clear local benefits to those that will be affected by it.

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Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee