Developer wins no fans with green plan (From Gazette Series)

Developer wins no fans with green plan

WIND enthusiast Dale Vince has issued a defiant message to opponents of his plans for a turbine farm at Nympsfield, insisting he will be back.

It comes as Stroud District Council and Cotswold Protection Group celebrate winning almost £15,000 in costs from Mr Vince for pulling his application to add four turbines to the one already at Tinkley Lane just weeks before an appeal.

Mr Vince said: "We haven't given up on the site. We will be back. We believe it is the right thing to do and the right place to do it and this time we will see any appeal all the way through.

"We are adamant we are going to win it.

But Cotswold Protection Group chairman Ian Blair pledged Mr Vince would meet significant local opposition if he attempted to revive plans to put more turbines in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

He said: "He will come up against the same problems he came up against before. He will have a number of government guidelines he will have to comply with and he will find it very difficult.

"We will put up robust defence. There's not much point in having an area nationally designated as of great landscape value if we are going to build huge industrial structures in the middle of them."

But Mr Vince argued that with government demanding ten percent of energy from renewable sources by 2010, the district was obliged to do its share.

"We all use electricity and we need to take responsibility for where it comes from," he said.

"We've got a vociferous minority and a planning committee that lacks courage to take decisions.

"It disappoints me the way the planners of Stroud deal with wind turbine applications. It is supposed to be a Green council but I don't buy that particularly."

District councillor and planning committee member Cllr Janet Wood (Ind, Coaley and Uley), who remains opposed to the plans, questioned if wind turbines were productive enough to justify building on the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Describing his intentions to repeat the process as "strange", She said: "You have to balance the benefits of renewable energy against damaging the AONB.

"The committee debated it and he didn't win the debate."

Mr Vince's company won permission last week to build eight turbines in Lincolnshire this summer, to add to the two being built at Ford, Dagenham.

"Other parts of the country are taking a different approach," he said.

The National Trust is still pursuing costs from Mr Vince for the failed planning application.