Last year saw 5 parish councils and well over 800 Swindon residents react to a Planning Department document that pointed to areas, including Highworth, Hannington, South Marston, Tadpole Farm and the eastern villages of Wanborough and Liddington as areas appropriate for wind turbines. In response, the residents and local parish councils asked that the Local Plan should define a minimum separation distance between any proposed wind turbines and residential housing.

There is nothing radical here, it’s been adopted by other Councils and figures in a bill before Parliament for a national planning restriction.

Hopes were raised when Councillor Dale Heenan, speaking of the Local Plan, said ‘the specific wording is still being discussed but I wouldn’t be surprised if it includes separation distances of 1km’. In the event, and despite Dale Heenan’s best intentions, the Planning Department’s views prevailed and the proposed Development Plan does not include a minimum separation distance.

Ill Wind, a group of local residents, successfully opposed a planning application for wind turbines overlooking Stratton and South Marston. They were concerned about the growing evidence about impacts on health, disturbance from noise and shadow flicker and the damaging effects on neighbourhoods that would be overlooked by giant moving structures of a size that would dwarf any building currently in Swindon.

Ill Wind are urging Swindon residents who don’t want to live to close to wind turbines to voice their objections to the anti-democratic way the Local Plan is bypassing the consultation process and being railroaded through to a February 21st deadline. If you are interested, and want to help, visit their website, illwind.co.uk, for more details.

Local residents successfully opposed a Planning Application to build 3, 120m high wind turbines in Swindon that would have been less than 300 metres from the nearest house, with 5000 homes and families within 2km of the turbines.

They did this because of the effects on the health and wellbeing of residents and the visual impact on the landscape. Effects that, in some cases, have been so extreme as to drive people living near wind turbines to sell their homes at reduced value and move away.

Ill Wind wants to avoid residents having to fight that same battle again and again as developers apply to build turbines in different sites across the borough knowing that once one site is approved the floodgates will open.

Although the Draft Plan says “Large scale wind-turbines (individual or collectively) are unlikely to be supported in close proximity to residential properties”, without a definition of “close proximity” we are at the mercy of the whims of SBC’s Planning Department. The same Planning Department that previously ignored all evidence presented by local residents and independent experts and recommended that three, 120m high turbines be built just 278m away from Swindon homes.

Ill Wind, many Parish Councils and well over 800 individuals asked for the new Core Strategy to include a minimum, typically 2km, separation distance clause – but it hasn’t appeared in the revised version.

Other Councils have done it – so why not Swindon?

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

There is a 9 week public consultation from Thursday 20th December 2012 until 6pm on Thursday 21st February 2013.

• You can read information about the Draft Swindon Borough Local Plan 2026, and also the ways in which comments can be made at:http://www.swindon.gov.uk/localplan Page 116 onwards of Swindon Borough Local Plan – Pre Submission are relevant.
• Click Here for options on e-mailing the Council about the Local Plan.
• You can add your name to the growing countrywide concerns about wind turbines at: Together Against Wind