Paul Golby, CEO of power major, E:ON, is hot under the collar about the lumbering nature of the British planning system.
Case-in-point: the London Array, an offshore wind farm which will produce enough power to supply quarter of Greater London’s needs – 750,000 homes.
The scheme got all its planning permission, apart from for a small substation where the power comes ashore. Swale Borough Council, acting against its own officers’ advice, wasn’t having any of that.
According to the Council’s CEO:
“Of course we need to be more self-sufficient in energy and Kent needs the jobs that such a major investment would bring, but members of our Planning Committee were right to put the interests of our constituents first over the undoubted national and regional advantages, because the people of Graveney will have to live with the adverse consequences of this investment for a considerable period of time. The Committee was not reassured that London Array had done enough to ease those negative impacts on the local community.”
