Ed Miliband is to relax planning laws to make it easier and cheaper for developers to build onshore wind turbines and solar farms. The Telegraph has more.
Ministers currently need to sign off on all new “nationally significant” turbines and solar developments that produce more than 50 megawatts (MW) of power.
But Mr. Miliband, the Energy Secretary, and Angela Rayner, the Housing Secretary, are hoping to increase the threshold to 100MW for wind and 150MW for solar.
The proposals, first reported by the Times, are part of a new consultation on the Government’s planned reforms to the National Planning Policy Framework.
Online guidance from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government reads: “With the changes in technology that have taken place since, many small or medium-sized projects now exceed the existing nationally significant threshold.
“This can be a barrier to the accelerated and streamlined deployment of these two cheap electricity-generating technologies at scales below what most people would consider to be nationally significant.
“Potentially allowing projects that fall beneath these thresholds to move through the local planning system, given they are less complex and geographically spread out, could result in faster consenting, and at lower cost.”
Mr. Miliband has already been accused of putting Britain’s food security at risk after signing off on the country’s biggest solar farm, which will be built on green land.
The Energy Secretary prompted fury by defying the planning inspectorate to green-light a 2,792-acre solar farm and energy infrastructure project in Suffolk and Cambridgeshire.
Worth reading in full.
Ah yes, the ‘green’ movement that destroys the countryside.
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