On Friday 13 December the government launched the Clean Power Action Plan which plans to bring 100MW + onshore wind projects back into the NSIP regime.

Lanpro (a multi-disciplinary company which offers landscape architecture, ecology and arboriculture alongside masterplanning, urban design, GIS, visualisation, historic environment and planning consultancy) works on major renewables projects throughout the UK. Tara Chopra, Technical Director – EIA and Major Infrastructure lead at Lanpro comments:

The Clean Power Action Plan sets out the full details of the proposals to bring 100MW + onshore wind projects back into the NSIP regime.

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Lanpro welcomes the changing thresholds but will be mindful that this can cause some challenges for current proposals and how/when this transition will be implemented, but also would welcome further details on implications for local authorities in terms of resourcing and the impact/perception on local community consultation.

We would encourage that the consultation follows best practice and is still meaningful rather than a tick box exercise and that it is still vitally important to get local knowledge and understanding of the proposals and how it can be best assessed and mitigated where practicable. We have successfully engaged with local communities up and down the country to ensure that they fully understand how they can benefit from renewable energy schemes. We hope that community benefits will be an integral part of the initiative and that there can be an industry standard approach to it to provide certainty to communities.