Oban Times Letters to the Editor - 7.11.24

Local authorities should follow Highland Council’s lead

Highland Council has rightfully  agreed to implement Councillor Helen Crawford’s important motion to help communities deal with the plethora of Big Energy planning applications, including producing a regularly updated energy development cumulative impact map; something that is desperately needed to show councillors and residents the terrifying industrial tsunami that is engulfing us.

Other local authorities would be well advised to follow Highland Council’s lead on this.

Meanwhile it suits the Scottish Government to excitedly leap into bed with the UK government in a blatant joint attempt to efficiently speed up the destruction of our rural environment by the same global investment companies, against the wishes of the very people they are paid to protect.

The recent consultation announced by the UK government and excitedly embraced by Scottish ministers is a democratic outrage. It is intent on removing local voices and centralising planning powers to the benefit of the profit driven multinationals.

Campaigners have been aware for some time that forces within the SNP, both here and in Westminster, are ignoring the desperate situation their own constituents are finding themselves in with mental distress and devalued homes, and speaking up and lobbying for the Big Energy companies that are merrily colonising our environment for profit. 

The most distasteful part of this new ‘consultation’ is to do away with the automatic public inquiry being triggered by a local authority objection to a large industrial development.

Local authorities should be listening to the people who live in the locality and representing their views – they don’t always but that is their job. To take away the opportunity for developers and their plans to be scrutinised in a public forum by crucially independent experts is a disgrace. That is our right and to deny us that means the only path open to us is court action against the Scottish Government for rubber stamping the demise of our way of life.

It is a crass and deliberate act to crush local democracy by those we pay to serve us.

The Holyrood elections are not so far away and every MSP should look in the mirror and ask themselves if throwing their rural citizens under Big Energy’s gravy train was worth it as constituents prepare to punish those who chose the side of the wealthy multinationals instead of theirs.
Lyndsey Ward, spokeswoman for Communities B4 power Companies, Beauly.