Concerns as German firm given green light to build new windfarm
Controversial new development is granted permission by Highland Council despite warnings over ‘significant adverse effect’ at site
LONG and narrow, Loch Shin stretches for 18 miles across an awe-inspiring North Highland landscape, a haven for salmon, trout, ospreys and otters. It is hugged by unspoiled peat moorlands and rolling hills.
For visitors to the town of Lairg which sits at the southeast edge of the loch, there is the curious “wee hoose” to photograph – a tiny whitewashed building on an island in the middle of the water – and the glorious sight of salmon leaping at the Falls of Shin.
With its mountains, peatland slopes, sparse population and lack of development, the land around Loch Shin falls within one of Scotland’s 42 designated wild land areas, acknowledged as national assets and determined by their naturalness, remoteness and ruggedness.
However, it will soon rumble to the sound of diggers and construction vehicles tearing through the Reay-Cassley wild land area on the lower edge of Loch Shin. Last month, Highland Council’s North Planning Applications Committee unanimously passed an application from German energy company WKN GmbH for a nine-turbine windfarm on the Sallachy estate.
Also German-owned, the private sporting and fishing estate spans 10,500 hectares and, says its website, is “set within breathtaking scenery along the bank of Loch Shin”.
Nine turbines
SOON the scenery will include nine towering turbines, with a blade-to-tip height of 150 metres and output of just under 50 megawatts (MW) along with associated tracks and roads, all in an area within Caithness and Sutherland Peatlands special protection area.
The go-ahead was despite NatureScot’s warning of the “significant adverse effect on the special qualities of Assynt-Coigach national scenic area, such that the objectives of the designation and overall integrity will be compromised”, and “unavoidable adverse effects on the ReayCassley wild land area, which is of national importance”.
From nature charity RSPB came concerns over a pair of white-tailed eagles newly arrived in the area, golden eagles, black grouse, and golden plover.
Mountaineering Scotland raised objections too, highlighting concerns over the “visual impact upon mountains and wild land … and the consequential potential adverse effect on mountaineering, recreation and tourism”.
Such worries, however, were not entirely echoed by some who may have felt the financial benefits from the farm’s development too good to turn down.
Local benefits
ALONG with £5,000 per MW per annum of community benefit payments, community groups will have up to 10 per cent community shared ownership and a 5% price advantage for local companies tendering for jobs on the windfarm.
That, combined with a simmering sense that rural communities have suffered from poor investment and regulations which appear to favour land over jobs, may well have nudged them towards offering their support.
Ardgay, Durness, Lairg and Scourie community councils were in favour, leaving just Rogart Community Council to voice concerns over the 560 % increase in HGV traffic resulting from the development.
Sallachy windfarm divided people even further afield: letters of support, and some from objectors, arrived from as far away as Westminster and Mayfair in London, Carlisle, Ayrshire, and Cumbernauld.
While the windfarm is not alone in the North Highlands it is contentious. In 2015, a proposal from the same developer for 22 slightly smaller turbines in the same area was refused by Scottish ministers, citing its visual impact in a designated wild land lan area, and the Ben More Assynt-Coig Coigach national scenic area.
At the time, then-Energy Min Minster Fergus Ewing said the Scottish Government had to “carefully balance” the benefits to be drawn from renewable r energy projects and their impact impac on scenic landscape and wild land land, adding the Sallachy development had “significant and unacceptable l landscape and visual impacts”.
“We have been clear that windfarms win can only be built in the right places pl and Scottish planning policy sets ou out rigorous steps to ensure windfarms are sited appropriately and sensitively,” he added.
Objectors’ anger ang
I cannot remember the detail now as it’s past. We deal with so many applications. Not everyone can be happy. Planning often upsets an objector or promoter
TO the irritation of some objectors, objec the new application was just 0.1MW below the threshold which would have hav required it to be handed to ministers for approval.
That, plus a relatively narrow divide between the 123 objections and 189 supporters, led them to assume the planning debate would be intense.
Instead, councillors watched a planning official’s presentation before nodding through the application with
only brief and largely supportive comments.
Asked to comment on the decision, chair of the committee, Councillor Maxine Smith, said: “Everything I wish to say was said during the debate. I cannot remember the detail now as it’s past. We deal with so many applications. Not everyone can be happy. Planning often upsets an objector or a promoter.”
While the Sallachy windfarm is perhaps easy to forget, its location in a designated wild land area has left conservation organisation the John Muir
Trust, dismayed. It has now called for a meeting with Highland Council to “discuss the Sallachy decision, the value of wild places in the Highlands, and the challenges we have in navigating future expansion of onshore wind for the benefit of communities and wild places”.
It added: “For everyone with an interest in the future of wild places, how they are managed for local community benefit as well as nature, this decision, and where we go from here, is highly significant.”
Financial support
THE organisation stressed it understood the issues facing rural communities, adding: “While community financial benefits are not a consideration for deciding a planning application, they are a consideration for people in local communities choosing whether to support a development.”
And in a warning to other wild land areas, it has predicted that the windfarm makes the area a target for future development.
That is echoed by Iain Milligan, spokesman for campaign group Save Our Hills. “The knock-on is you get one development and then another one comes along and then another. It’s like a domino effect,” he said.
“Highland Council covers a lot of the wild land of Scotland and if they have consented to this development, where will they feel they should draw the line?”
Local communities may rue the day they accept financial deals, he added: “Experience shows that community councils find it extremely difficult to decide what to do with the money they receive from these deals.
“People fall out over it, and they find they are very limited in what they can spend it on.
“Large sums of money end up locked up in bank accounts because they can’t agree what to do with it.”
But that is of little concern right now to communities set to benefit.
Project ‘potential’
NEIL Macdonald of North West Communities said: “Our discussions around shared ownership have been particularly helpful and there is potential for this project to really deliver lasting benefits for the communities.”
And David Watson of Kyle of Sutherland Development Trust said the project could “create significant economic opportunities for the communities of central Sutherland”.
Meanwhile, Oliver Patent, head of UK development at German windfarm firm WKN, expressed his delight to have achieved a “positive outcome” after more than 10 years seeking the go-ahead.
“We are committed to investing in Sutherland and believe the project represents a potentially significant economic boost to both the local area, by bringing investment and economic diversification, as well as benefiting the wider economic wellbeing of Sutherland,” he said.