Our Press Release - 30th September 2024
Communities B4 power Companies calls on Highland Councillors to do the right thing and vote for Councillor Helen Crawford’s Motion today to make the planning process more transparent and fairer and to give communities a greater say in Big Energy planning applications targeting the region.
For over a decade communities having been dealing with wealthy multinationals industrialising their environment. They have fought wave after wave of planning applications as the global investment companies saw rural Scotland as an easy touch with dispersed settlements, few voters and a government that encouraged them to do what they wanted. Communities have been overwhelmed and distraught at the mounting numbers of energy projects proposed for where they live. None of the developers will have to live with what they have done and have no connection with or desire to protect the Highlands of Scotland. It is all about profit and exporting energy outwith our country. Save for a few beads for the natives the energy companies just trash and go and make eye watering profits for their shareholders.
Today we have a chance to show what is happening here and many members of our group – now over 3600 – will be watching and those not in our region will be going to their own local authorities and demanding similar action. This is a movement to protect the environment from money driven energy companies that is growing across rural Scotland and it will not be stopped.
When Communities B4 Power Companies started in the spring of 2023 following SSEN’s infrastructure bombshell we took professional advice and were made aware of the energy companies ‘salami slicing’’ of planning applications. It means many applications for essentially the same project can land on planning officials desks. It is grossly unfair. It overwhelms, demoralises and depletes opposing communities resources to fight back.
We set about making the public aware of what it is and what it means and we are encouraged to hear so many people now using the term and understanding its implications.
We were also disgusted at the poor mapping by Highland Council when a wind turbine only map was supposedly updated twice a year did not also show all the other energy projects including the multiple terrifying battery storage units plaguing our communities. We also were concerned at the lack of knowledge and understanding of the cumulative impact of so many developments which seemed to be within Highland Council.
It is impossible to properly assess any one application on its own if the area is already flooded with others in the pipeline.
Lyndsey Ward for Communities B4 Power Companies says: “We are delighted that Councillor Helen Crawford has stepped up and understood the issues and is trying to actively do something about it. Our voices have been unheard for too long and the treatment of Highland communities by our elected representatives here and in Holyrood has been utterly shameful. They have backed Big Energy over their own people and the time has come to pick a side or their once safe seats might not be so safe after all.”
