Posted by Edward Wilkinson
I went to a village meeting on Monday night. There’s a minor row going on about the building of five new affordable homes in the middle of the idyllic village where I live.
It seems that the majority of the village can see that there is an inevitable push for such schemes throughout the country, and whilst they would prefer not to have them built “in their backyard”, they have decided to give the plan their consent. They could look beyond the immediate impact and see the long term benefit of the scheme for generations to come.
At the same time there is a very vociferous, not to say aggressive, minority group who object strongly. And after the meeting last night it was hard not to conclude that, once their objections had been dealt with one by one, they were utterly immoveable: they just weren’t prepared to budge an inch, except to say that they didn’t object if the site were moved to the outskirts of the village. Guess what! They are the ones living closest to the proposed site.
Is it really the same here in Northiam? Perhaps.
The latest news is that a group campaigning against AHS’s plans for a biomass power plant have got together and created a website. It doesn’t take long to go through it, and frankly it doesn’t say a great deal. It certainly doesn’t tell the reader on what grounds the campaigners are objecting to the site, nor who the campaigners are.
There is no acknowledgement by the campaigners that the powers-that-be – Environment Agency, Highways Agency, District Council etc etc – will be responsible for regulating the safe and clean operation of such a site.
There’s no reference to the fact that Europeans have been building plants like this for years, slap bang in the middle of towns and villages.
Above all there is no recognition that this power plant is going to create green energy for around 6,000 homes in East Sussex.
If the objections remain the same now as when they started arriving at the Planning Office, we would love to sit down and go through them item by item. If they are different, we haven’t heard them yet.
We have to assume that this Taskforce isn’t immovable, but are they thinking about the benefits of green energy for the generations who will be living in Northiam long after they have gone?
We would love to find out, and our door as ever remains open to them.
