Hi All

We wanted to update you on an important milestone in our legal campaign against the proposals for an industrial-scale windfarm development extension at Clashindarroch forest (known as, Clashindarroch II). As you will remember, Vattenfall formally applied to the Scottish Ministers for planning permission back in 2019/20. We remain firmly opposed to the development proposal and, as you may also remember, lodged a formal objection with Scottish Ministers to the application last year highlighting several fundamental flaws with it.

In its simplest terms, this is manifestly the wrong development in the wrong location and breaches key requirements for protected species derived from the Habitats Directive.

Aberdeenshire Council is a statutory consultee to the Scottish Ministers on the application and if the Council do formally object to the proposal, it can only be determined by Scottish Ministers following public inquiry.

In recent weeks and months, our legal and ecologist teams have, therefore, been continuing to scrutinise the interactions of Statutory Consultees (including the Council) with the Developer and Scottish Ministers as part of these formal consultations. We now know the case will be placed before Aberdeenshire Council’s Infrastructure Services Committee to determination the Council’s formal position at a meeting this week (21-01-21). And, we are delighted to share that the Council is now poised to object to the development. That is currently the formal recommendation from their specialist planning advisors.

This position to object has already now also been affirmed by the local councillors. This is a major step forward. 

Our legal and ecologist team have already also lodged a request to speak at the meeting this week We intend to emphasise our case to Cllrs as to why this site remains so vital for the Scottish wildcat and that the application is contrary to policy and must be objected to. At present, there can be no conclusion that the impacts to the wildcats will be anything other than significant due to serious flaws in the Developer’s existing Environmental Impact Assessment. These are flaws that our team has also tried to promote with the Developer to give them the opportunity to do the right thing, but they fail (or at least delay) to do so.

Remember, these are to be 180m blade to tip turbines which will introduce light, noise and other nuisance pollution into this landscape and with inadequate mitigation. It will also result in the felling of 125ha of forest. This is of course vital wildcat habitat.

The presence of a wildcat population at the site is no longer a matter of dispute. We are, therefore, astounded that SNH (NatureScot) has not also objected to the scheme, in line with its statutory responsibilities. We reiterate that this is not about whether you are pro/against wind-generation. Rather, that this development simply doesn’t comply with the rules it is required to and will have a potentially catastrophic impact on the nationally and internationally important population of wildcat present at this site. (We are, incidentally, pro-renewables where such projects are sensitively sited, genuinely involve communities and comply with legal rules etc they are required to. But this is just not the case here).

For those of you who are local to Huntly, please do consider reaching out to your local Cllr if you are able to prior to the meeting this thursday. They will have to carefully follow Codes of Conduct in relation to discussions about live applications of this sort, but this does not prevent you telling them why this development shouldn’t be allowed to go ahead and its important you do so where you can.

A full list of the Infrastructure Services’ Committee Members are available online here:-

https://committees.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/committees.aspx?commid=495

You can also find the full papers for the meeting here https://committees.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/committees.aspx?commid=495&meetid=19532 (Item 9 on the Agenda).

We will, of course, update you as soon as possible after the meeting on the outcome and next steps!

Thank you.

The Wildcat Haven Team