The Government has amended planning policy, giving English regions more routes to put forward onshore wind projects.
Communities secretary Michael Gove said: ‘To increase our energy security and develop a cleaner, greener economy, we are introducing new measures to allow local communities to back onshore wind power projects.’
Under the eased rules, communities will have alternatives to the local plan process for proposing onshore wind projects.
These include local development orders and community right to build orders, the Department for Levelling up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) announced yesterday.
The DLUHC said the alternative routes would enable onshore wind projects to be approved more quickly.
It said the change would ‘ensure the whole community has a say, not just a small number of objectors’.
The announcement reverses previous rules, introduced under former Prime Minister David Cameron in 2015, which meant an objection from just one person over an onshore wind development in England could stop it going ahead.
The DLUHC did emphasise that plans would still need to ‘demonstrate local support’ and ‘address planning impacts identified by the community’ to be brought forward.
The changes are part of the National Planning Policy Framework, which the DLUHC said it would respond to in full ‘later this year’.
The Government said it would also bring in incentives for local wind farm projects and would set out the details this Autumn.
RenewableUK's head of Onshore Wind James Robottom said: 'The proposed changes don’t go far enough. We will still face a planning system stacked against onshore wind that treats it differently to every other energy source or infrastructure project.
'A lot will be open to interpretation and there are still hurdles to navigate which remain in place. There has been a slight softening at the edges but nothing more. As a result, we’re not going to see investment into new onshore wind at the scale needed to rapidly cut bills and boost energy security.'
