Shropshire Council to object to plans for overhead power lines
Shropshire Council is to tell National Grid that cables connecting planned and newly-built wind farms in Mid Wales to the existing national electricity transmission network should not pass through Shropshire.
The council say if they do have to pass through the county they should be carried underground and any route should be determined by social, economic and environmental constraints.
National Grid is proposing to construct a new substation to collect the energy from the wind farms and a new 400,000 volt (400 kV) transmission connection, which will then take the power from the substation and connect it to the national transmission system.
National Grid is currently carrying out the first stage of a public consultation into how this will be done and Shropshire Council is one of the consultees.
The consultation is asking for people’s views on:
• The location of the new substation.
• The approach National Grid will take to connecting the new energy generation – ie. underground or overground cables.
• The route the connection will take.
At its meeting next Wednesday, Shropshire Council’s Cabinet members will agree the council’s response to the consultation.
Councillor Mal Price, Shropshire Council’s Cabinet member for planning, said:
“Shropshire Council recognises that National Grid is required to connect new wind farms to the network. However, Shropshire is a rural county where the attractive rural landscape character makes a significant contribution to the visitor economy. The impact of a 400kv overhead line connection is considered to be significantly detrimental to this and Shropshire Council would object on these grounds to any overhead line solution.
“We know that local people do not want to see pylons and overhead cables, and nor does the council.”
When the public consultation is complete, Shropshire and Powys Councils will have a further opportunity to comment on the process and provide report’s on the National Grid consultation to the Infrastructure Planning Commission for consideration prior to the submission of any application.
Further phases of consultation are planned throughout 2011 and early 2012 and National Grid is expecting to submit the formal planning application during 2012.
As the proposal deals with nationally significant infrastructure, the decision on the route of the connection will be taken by the national Infrastructure Planning Commission, not by Shropshire Council.
