Image by cowrin via Flickr
The Scottish Government are about to finish a consultation on home-based micro-renewables, with the idea being to remove the need for planning applications if you want to fit a wind turbine to your house or other methods of renewable energy.
To my mind, the should never have been part of the planning process in the first place - small turbines take up about the same amount of room as a TV aerial and no one objects to them (although I'm old enough to remember when satellite dishes were subject to planning approval*).
But the fact that they do have to go through the local government bureaucracy means that they're incredibly rare. I've only seen one "in the wild", and that's on a gable-end terraced house in Arbroath - and that's before you even get in to the hurdles of whether the area will provide enough wind to make the turbine worthwhile.
So yes, take micro-renewables out of the planning process. But I mentioned a bizarre situation. This first consultation only lets you install them 100 metres from your house! A second consultation will be immediately launched to do away with the 100 metre rule from the first consultation.
Quite why the first consultation went ahead with the 100 metre rule in it isn't exactly clear in the article. The government says it was to meet deadlines in it's own legislation, but that doesn't answer why it included the rule, or why they couldn't consult on the two proposals side by side.
On the other hand, this is a government bureaucracy we're talking about.
*I think I'm right in saying satellite dishes needed planning permission, but I'm now doubting myself
2 comments:
I think satellite dishes may have needed planning approval in conservation areas.
There's a wind turbine on the top of the sheltered housing near haymarket.
Of course there is! I was completely forgetting about them.
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