The summer is now well behind us but the issue of windfarms is as alive as ever, dominating my inbox, and rightly so.
Each application must be judged on its own merits but there is no doubt that, for many people, a large part of the concern relates to the number of applications across a relatively small area - what some have described as the ‘industrialisation’ of our countryside. These include largescale projects (turbines up to 200m high) including Meallbrodden, Glen Lednock and North Logiealmond across Strathearn and rural Perthshire. The Glentarken application was recently unanimously rejected by Perth and Kinross Council. Along with many local people, I very much welcome this considering the unsuitability of the site in matching with the character of the area.
Since I last updated readers, there have been several major community meetings across Strathearn including one I was invited to speak at in Fowlis Wester Village Hall in August, followed by one in Comrie on 2nd September, a community council one on 15th September and another to follow in Logiealmond at the end of the month. Large numbers are turning out for these meetings which tells its own story.
Meanwhile in the Highlands of Scotland, over 50 community councils representing around 75,000 people, took the unprecedented action of releasing a unified statement calling for a moratorium on all new developments until an agreed national energy policy is in place. It is reassuring that at the meetings I have attended in Perthshire similar calls have been made to unify local groups in a similar fashion to the Highlands.
The voices of local people must be heard, and until a coherent national strategy is in place, I will not support blanketing our hills in more turbines. Local people have had enough and that is what is being reflected overwhelmingly in my correspondence. Both cases of Glentarken and the Highlands convention show that we are winning the argument. So please continue making your voices heard and keep up the pressure.
