Shipdham goes back to the drawing board

11 March 2009

Ecotricity has vowed to continue its seven-year planning battle to build two wind turbines at site near Shipdham, Norfolk, despite having its latest appeal thrown out by a government inspector.

The Shipdham application was originally submitted in December 2001. It has now been through three public inquiries, it has even been granted planning permission once, only to have that permission quashed in the High Court.

But Ecotricity have announced they intend to put in a fresh planning application.

Dale Vince, founder of Ecotricity, said:

"I think the appeal decision is an interesting and unexpected turn of events but we have read the decision carefully and we think that the inspector has laid out for us very clearly what needs to be resolved about this application in order for it to succeed so we are now back to the drawing board. We are confident we can accommodate all of the inspector's concerns with a redesign of the layout.

"We intend to submit a fresh planning application to Breckland Council based on a new layout. The reasons for the refusal will be accommodated in the new design. We are very upbeat and very positive about this."

He added: "All of the reasons for refusal were around debates over noise. We will create a layout where there is no debate about noise. The project has been tried and tested in every other issue for seven years and the only thing that has been found wanting is the noise so we are confident we will be successful."

Geoff Hinchliffe, founder of Challenge Against Nimbyism in Shipdham (CANIS), was delighted Ecotricity planned to press on with submitting a fresh application.

Quoted in the local newspaper, the Eastern Daily Press, Geoff said; "It is extremely disappointing that local nimbyism has prevailed at a time when research published by the UK Met Office's Hadley Centre predicts only a 50-50 chance of keeping temperature rises below the disaster threshold. How can people be so blinkered?"

Find out more about the Shipdham wind park and the progress of our new application.

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