TOP STORY

The options are:

1. Reply to the questions now
2. Wait to read PVDP’s replies and respond then. 

For most of the questions, we advise waiting to read the Applicant answers, due to be published shortly after 22 August, and send your comments after that (deadline 12 September).

However, there are two questions directed in part to “all interested parties” and we encourage you to respond to these straight away (deadline 22 August). These questions are:

Question 2.13.8 This asks (simplified here) whether you would prefer views of the panels to views of permanent 3m high hedges (that wouldn’t be removed after 40 years)! – i.e. if plans to plant hedgerows along public footpaths were excluded from the applicant’s plans and not implemented? They stress that they are not necessarily advocating this or pursuing it as a possibility. 

The Examiner adds “This would of course result in un-mitigated visual effects being endured during operation but, at the decommissioning stage, the original landscape character could be restored closer to that presented, enjoyed and described in the book by Forever Fields”. 

Read the full question here.

Don’t feel that you have to make a choice!  In our view neither choice is acceptable.   Carefully considered scale, siting and design can make a development sympathetic to the landscape.  One way is by omitting panels from visually sensitive and highly contoured areas (eg Evenlode Valley, rising ground above Cassington, Spring Hill, Tumbledown Hill).  These areas have already been recommended for omission by all the District Councils, ICOMOS, etc due to their impact on Landscape and Visual Amenity.  

But please use your own words - don’t just copy this!

Question 2.9.4 This question asks for which areas do you think the need for mitigation [hedge planting etc] has been underplayed and what do you consider needs to be done for more effective mitigation? Read the question in full here.

As in question 2.13.8, you may wish to point out that “mitigation” wouldn’t be required if panels were omitted from visually sensitive areas. This question is particularly relevant to those of you whose properties are very close to the BWSF site and likely to have “new vegetation” planted just outside your boundary to screen your view - though this has still not been fully explained or shown on a plan by the Applicant as yet (apart from the North site). 

This second set of Examiners’ questions can be read in full here.

Here is a list of some more key questions that the Examiners have asked the Applicant (numbers are those given in the document). 

2.3.3 Other energy projects have been approved and are queueing for an available substation, so why the urgent need for BWSF?

2.5.1 Blenheim Company Structure and Trustees

2.5.2 Adequate Funding to proceed? ExA has concerns

2.5.4 Land at Bladon better left for Agricultural use?

2.5.5 Land at Church Hanborough better left for Agricultural use?

2.5.7 Permanent Acquisition- why permanent for a temporary development?

2.5.9 Funding. Would PVDP sell after consent?

2.6.12-18 Setting of listed churches and other properties

2.9.1 Generating excess power

2.10.2 Flood Modelling unreliable? 

2.10.5 Flood mitigation adequate? eg Cassington

22.11.6 Fallow land. How would land quality improve by just leaving it fallow?

2.13.12 Landscape & Visual Impact Assessment methodology

2.13.15 Residential Visual Amenity Assessment. Especially important for those living closest to the BWSF site.

2.14.1 Cumulative noise on PRoW

2.15.4 Educational Facility at Bladon.

Look out for answers to these questions - due to be published shortly after 22 August and respond by 12 September

Stop Botley West recently organised 3 events where Professor Alex Rogers, Chair of SBW provided an update on the stage that we’re currently at in the examination, what happens next, what SBW have been working on and how the funds raised so far are being used.

The two presentations from these events are shown below (Update from Prof Alex Rogers and Community Impact Report).

The Local Solution

Solar energy should be used specifically to meet local demands and directly benefit local communities, not big landowners and overseas companies.

1. Solar panels should be on house, office and warehouse roofs throughout Oxfordshire
2. Solar panels should be situated on brown field sites (Didcot Power Station, for example, which is already linked to the Grid).
3. Community solar farms should be encouraged. These are funded, designed and run directly under community control, and service just the community resulting in benefits to everyone’s electric bills.

And there are other imaginative means of providing green energy. These are just four: 

• Smaller scaled wind turbines can be used locally to serve a community.
• France has designed trees whose ‘leaves’ turn in the wind. One tree can provide an estimated 40% of the annual electricity for a house.
• Switzerland is putting solar panels between the rails of their entire railway network.
• In America, transparent solar ‘windows’ can, experts believe, power 40% of America

The National Solution

As well as a national rollout of these local solutions we have offshore windpower which offers peak electricity in the dark winter months when the UK most needs energy and when solar panels are least efficient. And, of-course, there are other offshore energy sources – wave power, tidal power etc already in use.

Finally, Andrew Tettenborn, Professor of Law at Swansea Law School sums it up in the Spectator: “In the dash for Green Energy “corporate capital is being handed a heaven- sent opportunity at the expense of you, me and the country we live in at least as regards solar power (Government policy) is not working for the benefit of the people ……..

but instead seems to favour a more international clientele.”

All of this means we don’t need old fashioned, large scale, inefficient solar ‘farms’.