{"id":10022,"date":"2015-04-15T16:02:16","date_gmt":"2015-04-15T15:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ihbconline.co.uk\/newsachive\/?p=10022"},"modified":"2015-04-13T16:54:36","modified_gmt":"2015-04-13T15:54:36","slug":"highland-council-interactive-windfarm-website-launched","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/?p=10022","title":{"rendered":"Highland Council: Interactive windfarm website launched"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new initiative launched by Highland Council aims to make information on wind farm locations, planned proposals and potential new sites easy to access through an interactive mapping tool.<\/span><\/p>\n

Highland Council writes:
\n<\/span>The Highland Council has launched a new interactive map on its website showing the location of windfarms and wind turbines in the Highlands.\u00a0 The user friendly Windfarm Activity Map covers all scales of wind energy development and provides detailed information such as turbine sizes and\u00a0 planning reference numbers to make it easy for people to get further information.<\/p>\n

Chair of the Planning, Development and Infrastructure Committee, Councillor Thomas Prag said:\u00a0 \u2018It has always been a bit of a challenge to keep track of windfarm development for everyone involved. This new mapping tool is a step up from what we had previously provided and gives very clear and comprehensive information at the click of a mouse. I am sure people will find having such an interactive and visual representation of where we currently are in terms of wind farm activity very useful. At the moment just the constructed and under construction schemes are shown on the map but plans are to get all approved schemes, refused schemes and those in the planning process added.\u2019<\/p>\n

Just shortly after the map was launched, Councillor Prag and his colleagues on the Council\u2019s Planning, Development and Infrastructure Committee had the opportunity to discuss progress in work to review the Council\u2019s Onshore Wind Energy Supplementary Guidance which is used in the consideration of planning applications for wind energy developments.<\/p>\n

New national planning policies published in June 2014 changed how Councils are to plan for Onshore Wind Energy development so Highland Council is currently in the process of reviewing their planning policies and guidance.<\/p>\n

During the Committee Members were advised that an initial stage of consultation on key issues has been completed and agreed that the Consultation Paper giving the Council\u2019s initial ideas for revisions to the guidance go out for public consultation between March and May with the intention that the formal draft document comes back to the Committee in August this year.<\/p>\n

The guidance will identify\u00a0those areas that are likely\u00a0to be most approriate\u00a0for onshore wind farms\u00a0as a guide for\u00a0developers and communities. This will take into account that other areas need to be protected due to their importance, for example for nature conservation or landscape. The Consultation Paper sets out further steps the Council proposes to take account of local considerations and cumulative impact before identifying the areas of Highland with the greatest potential for wind energy development.\u00a0 Whilst the public consultation is underway, officers will be commenting on SNH\u2019s draft soils and peat mapping (available now on SNH\u2019s website) and on SNH\u2019s forthcoming Descriptions and Guidance for the Wild Land Areas.\u00a0 Also, Members will be invited to take part in a workshop looking at the various options put forward for revising the Guidance.<\/p>\n

Committee Chairman, Councillor Thomas Prag, said: \u2018As a council we are supportive of the development of a wide range of renewable energy types including wave, tidal, hydro, onshore and offshore wind but we have to find a balance and be able to make informed decisions using robust guidance. Through the Guidance we need to reaffirm our commitment to identify means whereby communities can participate in and benefit from the development of renewable energy across the Highlands. This is an important piece of work so I\u2019d encourage people to take part as the comments we receive will help to complete the full draft Supplementary Guidance for consultation later in the year.\u2019<\/p>\n

View the news release<\/a><\/p>\n

View the wind farm mapping tool website<\/a><\/p>\n

IHBC newsblog on wind turbines<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new initiative launched by Highland Council aims to make information on wind farm locations, planned proposals and potential new sites easy to access through an interactive mapping tool. Highland Council writes: The Highland Council has launched a new interactive … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sector-newsblog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10022"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10023,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10022\/revisions\/10023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}