Register of advice

The list below is a record of advice the Planning Inspectorate has provided in respect of the Planning Act 2008 process.

There is a statutory duty under section 51 of the Planning Act 2008 to record the advice that is given in relation to an application or a potential application and to make this publicly available. Advice we have provided is recorded below together with the name of the person or organisation who asked for the advice and the project it relates to. The privacy of any other personal information will be protected in accordance with our Information Charter which you should view before sending information to the Planning Inspectorate.

Note that after a project page has been created for a particular application, any advice provided that relates to it will also be published under the ‘s51 advice’ tab on the relevant project page.

Advice given between between 1 October 2009 and 14 April 2015 has been archived. View the archived advice.

Enquiry received via email

East Anglia TWO Offshore Windfarm View all advice for this project

17 July 2018
Luigi Beltrandi

Enquiry

Dear Sir Re: Scottish Power Substations for East Anglia2 and East Anglia1 North Substations We live in Friston Suffolk. We attended a presentation by Scottish Power on 24th May 2018 which outlined their proposals for a revised land connection from that previously approved by the Planning Inspectorate at Bawdsey. This is currently under construction connecting the wind farm East Anglia 1 south to the national grid at Branford. The new proposed location for the land fall for the cables from East Anglia 2 and East Anglia 1 north is at Sizewell. The original connection for the three wind farms, EA2, EA1 north and south was approved by the inspectorate with land fall at Bawdsey extending via underground cables to Branford this has been well thought and considered to avoid villages and habitation but will no longer have provision for the cabling of EA2 and EA1 north. We do not understand why this approved cabling solution has required revising. We are being told by Scottish Power that the reason for the change of location has been dictated by National Grid. The proposals currently being entertained by Scottish Power will involve three substations connecting to your power lines on the northern edge of Friston within sight of the medieval village church. These substations will require an operational area of 30 acres plus areas for access they will have structures up 18 metres in height equivalent to a six-storey building. What is being proposed is a major piece of national infrastructure not just three simple substations as Scottish Power maintain. All this is proposed to be constructed in agricultural land and possibly in ancient woodland adjacent to a village which is currently surrounded by farmland with the highest structure being the listed church tower and windmill. We are extremely concerned at the scale and magnitude of this proposal and the way the site selection process has been carried out. The combined array of EA2 and EA1 north will produce 1600 MW and we are sure that you have an understanding of the scale of infrastructure needed to connect this to the grid, not something that should be dumped on the edge of village in the heart of rural Suffolk. We received today a reply from the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in response to an e mail from us which is truly unhelpful. It suggest that the Government has no overall coordinated strategy for how electrical energy is to be generated and distributed across the nation but that it simply a free for all for the private sector to decide, without regard to its impact on local communities and countryside. These are projects that will affect the nature of villages and rural landscape in perpetuity consequently their cumulative impact should to be fully understood and scrutinised against a national masterplan. We strongly support the role of wind energy in reducing the carbon foot print of the nation, however there appears to be a serious lack of coordination in how it is being delivered and distributed with Suffolk its countryside and residents being asked to bear a truly unreasonable burden. We also would like to draw your attention to the recent article by Fiona Cairns, director of the Suffolk Preservation Society in the East Anglian Daily Times on Saturday 9th June 2018 which much more eloquently outlines the principle issues involved. Yours faithfully Luigi Beltrandi

Advice given

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