09 March 2010

Our celebrations at having the planning approval upheld by Justice Cranston in the judicial review have now passed. The local group opposed to the already approved development has chosen to spend more time and money taking it to yet another stage and the ruling is now being challenged in the Court of Appeal.

The case will be seen by three Court of Appeal Judges in July 2010. Obviously we’re hopeful that the same outcome will occur, but by this time it will be two long, wasted years since South Norfolk Council first formally approved the decision. We simply can’t take this long to change where Britain’s energy comes from for the better, the climate just won’t wait.

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12 November 2009

Well it took longer than we hoped and three days at the High Court, but the Judge has finally made a ruling on the High Court challenge lodged against the planning approval. He has thrown out the reasons presented by those against the wind turbines at Lotus and determined that the decision made by South Norfolk Council to approve this application was wholly legal. Therefore the approval that we first got in July 2008 is re-instated.

As the Judge’s decision showed that South Norfolk Council made the right decision by approving the application, they are back in Court on Monday to request that the Judge award them costs.

We can now begin all the work that we had had to place on hold to get the turbines at Lotus installed and generating electricity.

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18 June 2009

Although this application was approved by the local authority the decision is being challenged by a local group who campaigned against the Lotus turbines. A Judicial Review has been lodged which we are now responding to through the High Court.

We have been waiting for over six months for a date for the first hearing, and we now have one; it’s in early July. At this hearing we hope that the Judge will either throw out the case or require those opposing the decision to refine their reasons for objection.

Once we have either of these bits of information we can either start building the site or get on with defending South Norfolk Council’s decision to approve the application. South Norfolk Council are still supporting this application and are spending considerable time defending their decision to allow this wind park to be built.

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23 July 2008

In a surprising U turn last night, South Norfolk District council voted to approve Ecotricity’s application to build three wind turbines at Lotus’s car factory in Hethel.

The Council had turned the same application down earlier in this year and looked sure to turn it down again and force an appeal – but, by just one vote, the application was approved.

The turbines are to be sited inside the test track at Lotus’s factory (an industrial site), which sits in a part of the district that the Council themselves had said was suitable for up to 6 wind turbines. The original refusal didn’t make much sense given that and the outcome at appeal looked pretty certain.

Construction work is expected to start next spring and the turbines should be up and running by later in the year.