There was a good turnout at the last district council planning meeting for the Alvington wind turbine application with supporters and dissenters in approximately equal numbers.

The committee failed the application because of a nearby listed building but it was a less than convincing argument for those who want to see our lovely countryside protected from these large, very conspicuous man-made structures.

The case for these structures is very weak. I have mentioned the pros and cons before but two aspects of this turbine comes to mind.

When put to  full council last year that we needed an energy policy to protect our countryside from turbines and direct developers to more acceptable, less damaging renewable energy. 

The answer from Cllr Robinson was that existing policies are robust and adequate protection.  This application alone clearly disproves that.  If it wasn't for the listed building our council would be recommending this turbine. Policy CSP.1 which should have been used, as it was being comprehensively broken, was no where to be seen.  Either we do need a policy, and quickly, or our council's 'environmental' section need to pull their finger out.

At a 'turbine policy' council sub-committee meeting a few months ago, a Mr. Frazier spoke in favour, saying that he would prefer to see this turbine out of his window than the view of the nuclear power station across the river.  Two points come to mind: a) to try and generate the same power as the station over the river it would take more turbines than we have land available in the district and then he wouldn't be able to see it anyway for the dense forest of turbine towers blocking his view of everything, and b) we would still need the power station to be there, in-place, ready for when the wind doesn't blow, a severe waste of generation and transmission infrastructure costs.  So we would have little benefit, except for the greedy few, and a destroyed countryside to boot for the majority.

My case is that some turbines will be useful but only in the right place and only when we have the capability to store massive amounts of excess energy – until then they are an expensive carbuncle on our valuable landscape.

– W. Williams, Coleford.