LONDON ARRAY WIND FARM SUBSTATION PERMITTED

The Secretaries of State for Communities and Local Government and Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform have decided to grant permission to London Array Limited to build an onshore substation in Kent to serve the development of a 1,000 MW offshore wind farm of up to 271 turbines - the largest proposed offshore wind farm in the UK.

The Secretaries of State concluded that although there would be conflict with countryside protection policies, that conflict needed to be balanced against the benefits flowing from a major wind energy project and the potential economic benefits which might arise for East Kent and which would be lost if the appeal were refused. The Inspector concluded that the proposal was in full accord with the aim of accommodating renewable energy projects with the least environmental harm.

The Inspector said that the Special Landscape Area designation of the appeal site had been affirmed in an up-to-date development plan, and gave full weight to the objectives of the protection of such areas. His opinion, however, was that the proposal was "an imaginative contemporary design which acknowledges the difficulty of accommodating a development of this scale and nature into this landscape", and "an imaginative and appropriate response to the inherent difficulty of locating a large piece of infrastructure into a coastal landscape". The Secretaries of State described the proposal as "a design solution fitted to its setting".

Andrew Newcombe, instructed by John Houghton of Bond Pearce, appeared for London Array. Richard Honey appeared for Kent County Council, which supported the proposal.