The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) has issued new planning guidance for renewable and low-carbon energy projects to ‘make clear the importance of environmental protections in deciding applications’.

The ‘Planning practice guidance for renewable and low carbon energy’ replaces the previous administration’s ‘Planning for renewable energy: a companion guide to PPS22’, which has now been cancelled. It is to be used by local authorities alongside the National Planning Policy Framework to help deliver new renewable and low-carbon energy infrastructure, without ‘overriding environmental protections and the planning concerns of local communities’.

It reads: ‘There are no hard and fast rules about how suitable areas for renewable energy should be identified, but in considering locations, local planning authorities will need to ensure they take into account the requirements of the technology and, critically, the potential impacts on the local environment, including from cumulative impacts. The views of local communities likely to be affected should be listened to.’

Technologies covered by the document include biomass, hydropower, active solar technology (photovoltaics and solar water heating), solar farms, and wind turbines.

Key considerations

Examples of the considerations for particular renewable energy technologies that can affect their siting include proximity of grid connection infrastructure and site size.

General criteria for consideration in planning applications include:

• ensuring the need for renewable or low-carbon energy does not ‘automatically override’ environmental protections;
• considering ‘cumulative impacts’ of the project, such as the number of wind turbines, which could affect local landscape and amenities;
• identifying any potential ‘damaging effects’ on landscape;
• ensuring heritage assets ‘are conserved in a manner appropriate to their significance, including the impact of proposals on views important to their setting’; and
• considering proximity of a project to any National Parks or Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Specifically, the document outlines that:

• hydropower planning applications should be accompanied by Flood Risk Assessments and not detrimentally impact on local sources of water;
• solar photovoltaic projects should consider the effect on appearance of National Parks or Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty as well as the impact on local views;
• wind turbine applications should include consideration of noise pollution, air safeguarding, electromagnetic interference and air traffic impacts.

‘Local people must be listened to when making planning decisions’

Speaking of the guidance, Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles said: “The views of local people must be listened to when making planning decisions. Meeting Britain’s energy needs should not be used to justify the wrong development in the wrong location.

“This new guidance is an important step in ensuring that communities can continue to shape their local surroundings and that landscape and heritage are properly considered and protected.

“Planning always works best when local communities themselves have the opportunity to influence the decisions that affect their lives. That is why it is so important every area has a local plan in place as soon as possible.”

Double standards

Commenting on Pickles’s statement, Friends of the Earth's Planning Campaigner Naomi Luhde-Thompson said that it was ‘right’ that the views of local people are listened to when making planning decisions, but added that the government appeared to have a double standard on renewable planning, after taking away many responsibilities from local government when it comes to shale gas exploration plans.

Indeed, under planning guidelines for onshore oil and gas published earlier this month, councils will no longer be able to investigate issues such as seismic activity, flaring and venting, as well as the potential impact on ground water supplies, before granting planning permission for new shale gas exploration (‘fracking’) wells. Instead the Department of Energy and Climate Change, the Environment Agency and the Health and Safety Executive will take responsibility for regulation.

Further, critics lambasted government for failing to open the plans to public consultation. It is believed that government has employed these rules to shale gas to ‘fast track’ the technology to fruition.

Luhde-Thompson said: “Eric Pickles rightly says the views of local people must be listened to when making planning decisions – it's outrageous this doesn't apply when it comes to fracking.

"Under this guidance clean energy schemes such as wind turbines could be rejected on visual grounds, while fracking operations that threaten local communities and pollute our atmosphere could be given a virtual green light.”

She added: "It's staggering that the minister has refused to insist on councils playing their part in developing renewable energy goals – unless everyone [takes] urgent action, the UK will fail to meet its targets for slashing emissions."

Friends of the Earth’s Head of Campaigns Andrew Pendleton also condemned the removal of local say in fracking projects, saying that it was “little more than a carte blanche to dispatch dirty energy companies into the British countryside to start sinking thousands of new fracking wells – and without any consultation”.

Read the ‘Planning practice guidance for renewable and low carbon energy’.