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PS – 61:

19-Sep-2015
(PS-61: A Perverse Planning Decision & Poor Reporting re: Turbine)

19-Aug-2015

Turbine gets go-ahead

Wednesday, 19 August 2015

A WIND turbine – which supporters claim could plough at least £500,000 back into the community over the next 25 years – has been given the green light by Forest councillors.

Around 60 campaigners turned up at the Forest of Dean District Council offices, in Coleford, to support the application at Severndale Farm in Tidenham.

The application for Resilient Energy’s third community-scale wind turbine in the district was recommended for refusal by planning officers who claimed it would have ‘significant adverse impacts’ on the landscape.

The decision was given the go-ahead by 10 to three and one abstention.

The application has been controversial with some residents opposing the turbine and an online campaign particularly on the grounds of noise and visual intrusion.

The Forest council say while they are keen to support any initiatives that help the environment and are good for the community, each will be considered on its own merits and must comply with national and our local planning policy.

Janine Michael, from Dean Community Energy group, said: “We are pleased councillors recognise the community benefits this scheme will bring. This was a great example of democracy in action.”

The wind turbine is capable of generating an amount of energy which is the equivalent required for 275 homes. The energy generated is sold onto the national grid with any profits given back to the community.

Resilient Energy’s first wind turbine at Great Dunkilns Farm in St Briavels has been operating since January 2013, and has so far provided £25,000 to local causes. A second turbine at Alvington Court is expected to complete this autumn.

Director of the Resilience Centre, Andrew Clarke said: “The decision to give permission for the project is great news. We will now commence raising money from sale of shares in the project to the public. We expect the shares to return 7 per cent each year in interest to investors plus Enterprise Investment Tax relief from the UK Government which in effect pays you back for 30 per cent of the shares you buy via tax rebate. 

“We expect the money to be raised by end of 2015 and construction to start in spring 2016. Our Alvington Court turbine is set for completion next month.

“An independent community panel will decide how the money is distributed while any surplus monies will be decided by a board of directors.”

Applicants Green Energy were also given the nod for a commercial solar farm at Tump Farm, Sedbury on Friday by planning officer Mr Tony Pope.

Farmer Lyndon Edwards said he was pleased that councillors had backed the scheme and added that the turbine will be erected in the next 12 months.

To view the original article CLICK HERE

This article seems to be so riddled with inaccuracies, I believe it is worthy of fisking, to see if I can get to the truth. I believe it was written in good faith by the paper but without questioning any of the claims, in almost as naiive a manner as that seemingly adopted by the FoDDC planning committee councillors!

Let us see:

A WIND turbine – which supporters claim could plough at least £500,000 back into the community over the next 25 years – has been given the green light by Forest councillors.

Supporters have claimed that the 4% share of profits that will accrue to the community will be a sum between £500,000 and £1,000,000 – this is clearly imaginitive as that indicates, based upon the life expectancy of the installation and current figures show that to be between 10 and 12 years, the amount annually paid would be between £41,666 & £83,333 ( giving the benefit of the doubt of 12 year service!). That indicates an annual profit for the applicant of an unlikely £1,041,666 to £2,083,333.

The hypothetical/fantasy figures just do not measure with reality as the applicant’s agents resiliance have confirmed tyhat the sililar sized turbine in St. Briavels has only contributed £15,666 a year to date!

Minded that a single fatality on the A48, contributed to by this massive moving distraction and the increased traffic will give a cost to the community at large of over £250,000 on todays figures, let alone the inflationary costs in 10 years time or a multiple fatality and injuries of a single accident in the next 10 years!

Even accepting the fancifull figures of the applicant, there is no enforcable contract for these sums which amount in fact to a mere £20,000 a year which in a community, even accepting Tidenham Parish to be the effected community -which it is not -, is very small beer! It amounts to less than £5 per household per annum! Whilst the applicants expect to make figures between £1 & £2 Million a year!

Around 60 campaigners turned up at the Forest of Dean District Council offices, in Coleford, to support the application at Severndale Farm in Tidenham.

Interestingly there is no mention of the fact that few of them seemed to be homeowners with a long term commitment to the community, nor is there mention of the obvious fact that their presence was organised by the applicant and many were from other areas, few if any were members ! Neither was there any mention of the numerous independent members of the community who had attended who were present! A strange concept of balanced reporting.

The application for Resilient Energy’s third community-scale wind turbine in the district was recommended for refusal by planning officers who claimed it would have ‘significant adverse impacts’ on the landscape.

This is a very simplistic dismisal of the Planning Officer’s detailed and comprehensive report which ran to some 20 pages of accurate data, as opposed to the selective sales pitch of the applicants claims!

The decision was given the go-ahead by 10 to three and one abstention.

A sad reflection on the standard of decisionmaking and even possible corruption of the due process within the FoDDC planning committee!

The application has been controversial with some residents opposing the turbine and an online campaign particularly on the grounds of noise and visual intrusion.

That the overwhelming percentage of independent members of the community were opposed to the application and wrote reasoned and detailed letters of objection is an undeniable fact, albeit overlooked. Support for the application seems to have been almost exclusively garnered from the internet and with standard proforma letters, solicited by the professional company working with the applicant, Councillor Maria Edwards. Many of the supporting letters, from within the area, seem to have been from tennants and employees of the Edwards family!

It would be of help if the press would direct interested parties to the online campaign based upon noise and visual aspects as I for one am unaware of such a campaign and am unable to locate it even with Google!

The Forest council say while they are keen to support any initiatives that help the environment and are good for the community, each will be considered on its own merits and must comply with national and our local planning policy.

Understanding of what is and what is not environmentally beneficial would seem to be beyond the understanding of FoDDC planning committee!

Janine Michael, from Dean Community Energy group, said: “We are pleased councillors recognise the community benefits this scheme will bring. This was a great example of democracy in action.”

Dean Community Energy Group would seem to be a largely moribund organisation supporting a web site which runs to 4 items of news, the last being from December 2013! The site has 4 pages, put together in a manner not disimilar to that used by The Resiliance Company in their commercial interest and no readily identifiable individual participants – I suspect it is a commercial spin off of the wind turbine scam in general!

The wind turbine is capable of generating an amount of energy which is the equivalent required for 275 homes. The energy generated is sold onto the national grid with any profits given back to the community.

This is tortolagous twaddle!
Firstly wind turbines are so grossly inefficient they can not be relied upon to produce one iota of power when required! Even on the applicants fantasy figures based upon 24/7 optimum power generation – which NEVER occurs – this means Tidenham requires some 20 such turbines for domestic requirements alone!

As for giving ANY PROFITS to the community this is a dishonest misrepresentation as even the applicants are only talking of a small percentage of the profit! It would also seem, from data in the public domain, that the applicant Councillor Maria Edward’s agents Resilience, in one or other of their corporate guises, extract a basic fee of between 9 & 10% in perpituity from the gross income, together no doubt with direct fees based upon costs and profits thereon – then of course any disbursements by way of income to any investors be they Resilience its owners or international corporate investors.

Thus the net bribe to the effective community, which has NOT been clearly defined, is ever diminishing being a very small percentage of the residual profit in prescribed areas!

Resilient Energy’s first wind turbine at Great Dunkilns Farm in St Briavels has been operating since January 2013, and has so far provided £25,000 to local causes. A second turbine at Alvington Court is expected to complete this autumn.

Firstly it is reassuring to note that resiliance are prepared to show that their turbine at Great Dunkilns Farm is something of a failure and that St. Briavels would require dozens of turbines to supply even their domestic needs!
As for the Alvington Court turbine, which was widely rejected by the community and denied construction by FoDDC and was only shoe horned in by use of a Planning Apeal – even then it seems something of a disaster as it has failed to raise the funds required to erect it, even with subsidies! Shareholder applications were insufficient and a loan of £600,000 had to be obtained – so I presume that will be, together with the interest, set against the so called communitty benefit as a cost to their percentage!

Director of the Resilience Centre, Andrew Clarke said: “The decision to give permission for the project is great news. We will now commence raising money from sale of shares in the project to the public. We expect the shares to return 7 per cent each year in interest to investors plus Enterprise Investment Tax relief from the UK Government which in effect pays you back for 30 per cent of the shares you buy via tax rebate. 

I do appreciate the decision is great news for the applicants, who will now be eligible for huge subsidies from the tax payer for their near totally useless and clearly unpopular industrialisation of this area for the community. It is however deeply unfortunate for the public at large both in terms of the amount of tax payers money that will now be wasted but also for the ecological damage particularly environmentally in terms of both amenity and Carbon footprint!

I would also urge individuals to treat the investment terms presented with some care as they may well be a matter for high tax payers and less rosy for others – as you will appreciate the applicant and their agents are not financial advisors and not bound by the ethical codes of the FSA!

“We expect the money to be raised by end of 2015 and construction to start in spring 2016. Our Alvington Court turbine is set for completion next month.

Expectation is one thing but reality is another – let us face it the St. Briavels turbine is proving far from a success with less than 1/3rd. efficacy, or so the owners were forced to admit by Tidenham Parish Council who took their duties rather more seriously than FoDDC who failed to question any of the basic unsubstantiated claims of the applicant and their agents!

Likewise we have already ascertained Resiliance failed to raise the money for the Aylvington installation and have had to resort to massive borrowing!

“An independent community panel will decide how the money is distributed while any surplus monies will be decided by a board of directors.”

Independent would seem to a hugely subjective viewpoint of little meaning or significance, as is the  nebulous infference of ‘surplus profit’ surplus to what and surplus of what claims that may be made? This is clearly a meaningless claim!

Applicants Green Energy were also given the nod for a commercial solar farm at Tump Farm, Sedbury on Friday by planning officer Mr Tony Pope.

There is at least rather more honesty in claiming solar panels are ‘green’ than there is in the dishonest pretence that a wind turbine standing 337 feet above the River Severn is in some consequential way beneficial to the ‘community’!

Farmer Lyndon Edwards said he was pleased that councillors had backed the scheme and added that the turbine will be erected in the next 12 months.

It is clear that as a businessman Lyndon Edwards with his Farm Shop, rented Office complex, numerous rented properties is prone to, in farming terms, count his chickens before they are hatched in that the ‘community’ he has seen fit to exploit has already called upon Greg Clarke, the Minister concerned, to call in the plans and the local MP Mark Harper to take strenuous steps to meet with the ‘effected community’ group and investigate possible corruption of due process and that the ‘effected community’ group are investigating the details of Judicial Review of the process utilised, to obtain committee consent and the possibilities of corruption of due process – I feel that the process is far from over and the likelihood of completion of this industrial installation is far from being a certainty, let alone within a year!

 

We believe the information gathered on this site can act to bring the truth, regarding the dishonesty of the claimed benefits of Wind Turbines (WT) to the front of people’s minds as they are regularly taxed, in a hidden tax, on their energy bills to fund these politically correct and fundamentally all but useless monstrosities.

We have gathered a great deal of information in our efforts to prevent the industrialisation of Stroat and the banks of the Severn Estuary and across the wider area including the Forest of Dean (FoD) as administered by The Forest of Dean District Council (FoDDC), areas of outstanding natural beauty (AoONB), sites of special scientific interest (SSI) & wildlife habitats.

Please help to spread the truth about the Wind Turbine scam and the fundamental flaws and lies of the ‘Warmists’ & self proclaimed ‘Greens’, which are presented as ‘fact’, regarding the anthropogenic influence of mankind on Global Warming and Climate Chance.

Arm yourself with facts to defeat the biggest con of the late 20th and early 21st Century, and do please spread the truth and the URL of this site as widely as you can.

Posted by: Greg Lance – Watkins (site owner)

If you would like more information about Stroat see: http://Stroat-Gloucestershire.com/

If you would like more information about Greg_L-W see: http://GregLanceWatkins.com/

E&OE

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