Environment and Sustainability Committee
Inquiry into Energy Policy and Planning in Wales

EPP 197 – Wendy Owen

Dear Sir

Re: The National Assembly for Wales’ Environment and Sustainability Committee inquiry into energy policy and planning in Wales

As a resident in the heart of the TAN 8 areas of Mid Wales, I welcome the news of the proposals for this review. I am greatly concerned, at present, with the increasing number of windfarm proposals in Powys and their associated connection lines to the national grid. I believe the TAN 8 to be out of date and in need of a revision and I am pleased to learn that the committee will be considering whether or not a formal review of TAN 8 will now be required. When these areas were originally designated for windfarm development no one could have envisaged the resulting high density of windfarm proposals within them, and the harm which will be caused by this level of development. Wales has already exceeded its target percentage for renewable energy production and the land and her residents should not be forced to suffer further blight.

 My main objections to windfarm development on this scale are as follows:

Mid Wales has beautiful scenery and many of us depend upon in some way this for our livelihood. There appears to be total disregard for visual amenity with the advent of increasingly high and more efficient turbines. Landscape chracters will change utterly as a result.

Depreciation of house / land value within the area (and no prospect of compensation for those the losers). There will be many homeowners who will lose financially as a result at the expense of profiteering wind farm developers, and the people of mid Wales will effectively be subsidising "green" energy for England.

There has been no comprehensive environmental study on the implications of TAN8

There has been no assessment of the cumulative effects of all these proposed windfarms on flooding, displacement of regional populations of birds etc, nor on the impact of all the transport movements required to construct the windfarms and associated infrastructure. It is this cumulative impact which is of grave concern to me.

It is vital that TAN8 be carefully reconsidered now. 

Yours faithfully

Wendy Owen