FORCE response to Allerdale's draft Local Plan

This is a summary of the response from FORCE to Allerdale's draft Local Development Plan.  We do urge everyone to respond to Allerdale before the consultation period ends on 31st July.  Please feel free to use as much or as little of the FORCE comment in your own response as you wish.  Once the consultation ends, Allerdale may not listen to us like this again for another 15 years!  Comments can be emailed to localplan@allerdale.gov.uk

 

or sent by post to

 

Planning Policy Department

Planning Services

Allerdale Borough Council

Allerdale House

Workington

Cumbria

CA14 3YJ

We neither understand nor agree with the position the LPA has adopted by accepting the 'branding' of Allerdale as part of Britain's Energy Coast.'

EC8 would be much strengthened by rigorous cross referencing with other parts of the Core Strategy such as Landscape, Biodiversity and Geodiversity, Historic Environment to name just a few.  It also strikes us as perverse that there is no reference in EC8 to the protection of the countryside from unnecessary development despite the fact that, with some variations, this is a statement which recurs in other parts of the Core Strategy.

FORCE does not accept the opening statement in section EC8 that the UK is committed to producing 35% of electricity from renewable sources by 2020.  On the other hand, we do agree with the opening statement in section 4.3 in the Copeland draft LDF Core Strategy that 'the Government has set a target to supply 15% of the UK's energy from renewable energy by 2020.'

Given the significance of the problem of wind farm proliferation in the Borough of Allerdale, we feel that a Development Management Policy on renewable energy should form an essential part of the Local Plan.  We note that Copeland has included just such a policy and that it lays down very specific requirements in relation to future applications.  It also makes specific reference to the Cumbria Wind Energy Supplementary Planning Document, a very useful tool which appears to have been marginalised by Allerdale Borough Council's policymakers in the preparation of the LDF.

We believe that, in the interest of residents' health and amenity, the Council should consider introducing set back distances from unassociated properties for wind turbines commensurate with the size and number of the turbines but certainly not less than 500m for the genuinely small scale machines (15m height only) with the next minimum distance being no less than 1000m for medium scale turbines.

In light of the fact that the Council is currently receiving many applications for single turbines (most of them well in excess of the DECC definition of small scale), we believe it is now essential that these structures are included in cumulative assessments, including sequential cumulative effect, in the future.

As the proliferation of wind energy development is now such a significant issue in the Borough, we believe that the Local Plan should specify that all applications for wind turbines over 15m hub height should be decided by councillors at the Development Panel.  Additionally, borough councillors should be immediately informed if a wind energy application comes forward within their ward.