David Bellamy opposes Llandudno windfarm plan

Dec 18 2008 by Judith Phillips, North Wales Weekly News

David Bellamy

CONWY County Council is being asked to back a judicial review in the High Court into the decision to grant permission for the 250 turbine Gwynt y Môr windfarm.

And environmentalist David Bellamy has added his voice to the campaign to force the Government to back down.

On Sunday he addressed a public meeting at Llandudno town hall called by protest group Save Our Scenery (SOS) who say the windfarm will destroy the view from the resort’s promenade and adversely affect tourism along the North Wales coast.

Mr Bellamy said: “We are being fed lies all the time about the supposed benefits of windfarms. No matter how many of them or how large they are, they will not allow us to close down our conventional and nuclear power stations.

“The sums just don’t add up and if we’re not careful we will destroy what we want to preserve, landscapes and lifestyles, with a head-long rush into a flawed technology which will cause serious social, landscape and visual harm, produce a small amount of intermittent electricity and cost the UK tax payer billions of pounds in unnecessary subsidy,” he said.

Former Government scientific adviser Dr Mike Hall also spoke at the meeting and said that although in normal planning decisions the “right to a view” wasn’t a consideration, a legal expert recently said it could become one if the view was an essential asset of a business.

And SOS chairman John Lawson-Reay agreed the impact on the view from Llandudno bay could be a reason for a judicial review.

“We are pursuing the cause of a judicial review and have spoken to councillors who support us in this. In Cumbria recently there was a case of a caravan site with marvellous views.

“Legal advice was that if wind turbines were put in the middle of that view they would have an adverse effect on that business, and I believe hotels on Llandudno promenade would have grounds for arguing the same thing,” he said.

Conwy county councillor Janet Finch-Saunders is asking for a special meeting of the council to be called before Christmas to discuss support for a High Court judicial review.