England a ‘godforsaken’ place for building onshore wind farms – ScottishPower

Chief executive Keith Anderson told MPs the company was not planning to construct any onshore sites in England.

Chief executive Keith Anderson described the process as ‘cumbersome, slow, difficult and fraught with uncertainty’ (Niall Carson/PA) (PA Wire)

The boss of ScottishPower has said that developing wind farms in England is “godforsaken” despite changes which the Government promised last year.

Keith Anderson told MPs that the company, which is one of the UK’s largest wind farm builders, was not planning to construct any onshore sites in England.

“If I speak from the part of our company that is a wind farm developer. I am not proposing, or planning or looking at developing any onshore wind farms in England. It’s godforsaken,” he told the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee.

“The number of sites available aren’t that great, the wind yields aren’t that brilliant, but the process is cumbersome, slow, difficult and fraught with uncertainty.”

It comes months after the Government made changes to the planning rules, promising they would lift the de facto ban on onshore wind in the country.

Under the former system, if a single local resident objected to the wind farm, planning permission could be refused.

The changes aren’t sufficient, if you want to build onshore wind in England, we need to see some fundamental changes to, for example, the footnotes in the national planning policy framework

Barney Wharton, RenewableUK

But RenewableUK’s Barney Wharton told the MPs that the changes did not go far enough and that small sites in England faced major hurdles to putting up wind turbines still.

“The changes aren’t sufficient, if you want to build onshore wind in England, we need to see some fundamental changes to, for example, the footnotes in the national planning policy framework,” said Mr Warton, who is the trade body’s director of future electricity systems.

“The vast majority of onshore wind in England will be smaller projects, smaller sites, but if I want to put a small turbine on the roof of my house I am subject essentially to the same planning requirements that someone building a 100-megawatt wind farm would be subject to. That’s wild.”