Crida Wind Proposal: The Facts

A wind farm called Crida (no such place exists) has been put forward in a proposal to Council by developers - Sharenergy in , Sustainable and backed by Natural Power in Wales - to put up two towering industrial wind turbines at Meadowley on the historic Jack Mytton Way.

According to the Sunday Times, local property prices will be affected by 40% when an unspoilt area such as around Bridgnorth is turned by developers into a 'wind turbine landscape'.

Each will be one and a half times the height of Nelson’s column and will completely dominate the ancient natural landscape around the west of Bridgnorth – the gateway to Shropshire.

The Jack Mytton Way will become despoiled and potentially dangerous for inexperienced riders as horses may be startled by the sudden starting of Golaith rotor blades and the noise of the wind turbines.

The countryside will be degraded, with the west Bridgnorth Hills becoming a target for land-grabbing developers as Bridgnorth becomes a potential wind turbine landscape and a ‘hot--spot’ for developers.

Equestrian tourism in the area will be badly harmed with Triffid-like industrial turbines blighting Shropshire's 'flagship' tourist trail for thousands of riders, walkers and cyclists. Shropshire Council describes the trail as giving visitors and locals the chance to discover the 'secret treasures' of the county's 'unspoilt countryside'.

The turbines will desecrate the local historic countryside in the west Bridgnorth Hills, with views, noise, and potential health problems seriously affecting the villages of Morville, Chetton, Underton, Meadowley, , Morville Heath, Tasley, The Lye, .

If the two wind turbines proposed by Sharenergy and Sustainable Bridgnorth are permitted at Meadlowley, they will be the first in South Shropshire and will open up a flood-gate of ‘speculation’ opportunity for cowboy land speculators using the government’s ‘Renewable Obligation tariff’ – which is adding around £300 a year to YOUR fuel bill - to make huge profits for themselves (and the farmer, landowner and developer) whilst the local community get almost nothing. Only a wrecked local landscape and travel chaos and misery and desecration for years.

In the scoping proposal document submitted to Shropshire Council by the developers they state that roundabouts will need to be dug up, roads widened and closed down and ancient hedgerows ripped out to accommodate the aircraft style convoys of lorries and cement mixers required to build the industrial turbines – which are being imported from abroad.

Views will be harmed across the entire area around the west of Bridgnorth with the wind turbines being visible for up to twenty miles away – as far away as Wolverhampton.

Tourism in Bridgnorth and the surrounding area will be greatly damaged. The area around Morville and the west of Bridgnorth contains unique cultural heritage, local history and villages whose historic setting is part of what makes Bridgnorth a regular winner of Bloom in Britain, and special for such festivals as the Bridgnorth Haydn Festival.

Currently 6% of the Shropshire economy relies on tourism, with 11 million visitors each year – employing 8000 people in full time jobs. Bridgnorth is the gateway to Shropshire and needs to be protected as one of the market town jewels of the county. People come to Bridgnorth market day from as far way as Wolverhampton, , Cheshire and Stoke because of its unique character.

Heritage sites and landscapes in the Bridgnorth area, such as Grade 1 Morville Hall, the Dower House at Morville, Upton Cressett Hall and the historic churches of Morville, Chetton and Upton Cressett will have the harmony of their ancient landscape butchered by industrial pylons and turbines that will be overbearing and ruin the appeal of the "Gateway" to Shropshire.

Upton Cressett and the church of St Michael is a major heritage attraction for the town of Bridgnorth. The medieval hamlet has been nominated for the category of ‘Hidden Gem’ in the Hudson's Heritage 2011 awards. The Shropshire Star has referred to Upton Cressett as one of the ‘secret jewels’ of the county. This timeless heritage would be ruined if the approach to the church of St Michael was past a farm of wind turbines erected right on top of the ‘Blue Remembered Hills’ of AE Housman.

WHAT THE DEVELOPERS THINK...

In a letter published in the left-wing New Statesman magazine (September 2011), Bob Ensum, on behalf of Sustainable Bridgnorth and Sharenergy stated the following:

"The Crida proposal is an entirely community-owned project of two medium wind turbines led by people from the local area. In this case, the "developer" is the "local community".

Stop Bridgnorth Wind Farm replied:

Bob Ensum's ill-founded claim that 'the developer is the local community' cannot be allowed to pass uncorrected. First, the Crida wind farm (a place that does not even exist) will not benefit the 'community'.

The energy provided will be paltry - maybe enough for a few hundred homes to boil a kettle for tea. The real beneficiaries (thanks to huge Renewable Obligation subsidies added onto our domestic bills) are the farmer Clive Millington, and the energy companies Sustainable Bridgnorth, Sharenergy and the Welsh power company giant Natural Power.

There has been no proper local consultation. The public 'exhibition' referred to in Bridgnorth Town Hall was held in the middle of the afternoon during the week without a single resident of the local villages affected being informed by letter. Moreover, when I showed up, the majority of people I spoke to (it was poorly attended) were against the proposal. This was confirmed by a local poll of over 500 visitors to Upton Cressett over the last month which found that over 92% of the 'local community' are opposed to the proposal - as well as Tory Philip Dunne MP, who has described it as 'inappropriate'.

The desecration of AE Housman's 'Blue Remembered Hills' would be hugely damaging to local tourism around the jewel of Shropshire's market town of Bridgnorth. In addition the Shropshire CPRE have come out strongly against, as have local Rambler groups and the National Trust tenants at Grade 1 Morville Hall - whose parkland, historic church and estate are next to the turbines. These include the respected author Dr Katherine Swift, a pillar of the local community, who describes the proposal as 'unthinkable'.

Last week, we formally challenged Bob Ensum and his colleague at Sharenergy to a public debate, saying I would book Morville Village Hall so we could properly test the feelings of the local community. We suggested a democratic vote of every single village member in the spirit that planning minister Greg Clarke has envisaged as part of the Localism Bill. The developer's reply was that, 'We have no plans to engage in a public debate of the sort you propose'.

Did you know?

1) To get the turbines up to Meadlowley roads will have to be widened, huge convoys of lorries the size of aircraft carriers will have to be used that close down roads and roundabouts will have to be dug up and removed.

2) The turbines will come from abroad. There is nothing 'green' about their construction of the mechanics or travel nightmare and chaos of their transportation to the remote hamlet of Meadowley, carving up the roads and lanes around Bridgnorth, Morville, and Underton.

3) Other local farmers are following Crida's proposals closely as they also want to make up to £20,000 income per turbine which we, the electricity paying community, are paying for.

4) Not a single resident in the villages affected have been sent a single letter by the developers stating why they are proposing to build an unwanted wind farm in the west Bridgnorth Hills.

5) When challenged to a public debate in Morville Village Hall, and a democratic vote, Shareenergy, Sustainable Bridgnorth and Crida representatives formally declined. They claimed that a public exhibition in Bridgnorth Town hall, in the middle of the afternoon during the week amounted to a public consultation.

6) In their presentation at Chetton village hall, they couldn't point correctly to where Meadowley was and pointed to an area that was several miles away from where the Jack Mytton Way is.

7) Official figures from the John Muir Trust show that the average power output of wind turbines is well below the rates often claimed by industry and government. For example, the wind turbines in Scotland linked to the National Grid muster less than 20MW of energy - that's enough power for a mere 6,667 households to boil their kettles for a cup of tea.

Stuart Young, author of the report, said, “Over the two-year period studied in this report, the metered windfarms in the U.K. consistently generated far less energy than wind proponents claim is typical. The intermittent nature of wind also gives rise to low wind coinciding with high energy demand. Sadly, wind power is not what it's cracked up to be and cannot contribute greatly to energy security in the UK."

8) Wind energy is an unreliable and broken policy. A wind farm in Scotland had to be paid £1.2 million recently just to have it closed down for the night because there was too much wins. A similar pay-out of nearly £1 million - funded by YOU on your electricity bills - was paid out last year in Scotland again.

9) Nobody from any of the development companies has bothered to write a single letter or even ask to visit any of the heritage buildings, churches or Listed Buildings, or Scheduled Monuments affected by the proposal. When invited to visit, Sustainable Bridgnorth and Sharenergy declined to both to visit. When William Cash asked Jon Halle, head of Sharenergy, if he could name a single heritage building in a five mile radius of Bridgnorth he admitted he could not.

10) The developers claim they represent the local community and are from the local community. This is not true – the Screening Opinion was put together from a desk of the company Natural Power in Aberystwyth and Sharenergy is based in Ludlow. None of the developers live in the local community of the villages affected.

Natural Power is a power giant headquartered in Scotland and his global offices in Inverness, Falkirk, Wales, New York, British Colombia, Chile, and of course Strasbourg.

11) In their scoping report to Shropshire Council, the developers have dismissed the affect on views from other parts of the county, saying that the ‘proposed site will not be located in an environmentally sensitive location’.

12) In the 8.4 Cultural Heritage Assessment of the scoping evidence put forward to Shropshire Council the developers state:

The site does not lie within any Special Landscape Area nor is it in a Historic Landscape Area.

This is at odds with what Philip Dunne and the Shropshire Campaign for the Protection of Rural have to say 9please see press release from Philip Dunne and also letter from Sarah Bury, Shropshire president of the campaign for the Protection of Rural England.

13) There is no mention of the Jack Mytton Way – Shropshire’s flagship bridle path - at the entire 8 page report, which lists all the 12 global offices of Natural Power.

14) There is no mention of Morville Hall, or the Dower House of Katherine Swift in the entire proposal. There is no mention of the historic National Trust estate, nor the Grade 1 church of St Gregory.

15) There is a passing reference to Upton Cressett, but not as a heritage attraction for local tourism but only referring to the medieval fishponds that no longer exist. The Elizabethan architecture described by Simon Jenkins as ‘an Elizabethan gem’ is simply referred to as ‘early buildings’. It is obvious from the desk top report that nobody has bothered to visit the historic hamlet where families enjoy visiting – by car, cycle or foot.

16) The report claims that there are approximately ‘nine’ listed buildings in close proximity of the proposed site at Meadowley. As Dr Chris Douglas has shown, the real figure is 24 Listed Buildings – a copy of the List put together by Chris Douglas is available on our SBWF website (www.stopbridgnorthwindfarm.org).