Community Drop-in Days Announced For Boddington Reservoir Wind Energy Project

Published: 25/11/2010

Partnerships for Renewables has been carrying out environmental and technical studies on British Waterways land near Boddington Reservoir since August 2009. The company has announced future community ‘drop-in’ dates ahead of plans to submit a planning application for a single wind turbine to Daventry District Council early in 2011.

Regional Manager at Partnerships for Renewables, Tony Duffin, commented: “While we hope to submit a planning application early next year we recognise that following the submission of the planning application members of the local community will continue to want to discuss our work with us. To this end we will continue to hold community surgeries at Byfield Village Hall throughout 2011.

“The community surgeries will continue to supplement the other routes members of the community can take to find out further information. We would encourage anyone to contact us with any queries via the phoneline (0800 731 7395) or email address (pfr@communityrelations.co.uk).

“We appreciate that having any form of development proposed in your local area can be of concern and we take a great deal of care to ensure that we provide accurate information to local residents. We were concerned when a leaflet, promoting a public meeting locally, was brought to our attention which contained several inaccurate statements. Because we felt the statements were clearly inaccurate and designed to make residents nervous about any future application we approached the Advertising Standards Authority to challenge the statements.

“On notification of the complaint received by the ASA, the authors were not able to provide evidence to substantiate the claims and confirmed that they would not repeat them in future. Having received this feedback we have confirmed that we will not take any further action but would like to encourage anyone who have been concerned by information contained in the leaflet (which carried a picture of a double-decker bus) to raise their concerns with us and we will aim to provide them with any additional information they might require.”

The leaflets, used to promote a public meeting in August, made unsubstantiated claims about the potential wind energy project near the reservoir, including:

• ‘Minimum of 3, but up to 15 turbines’;
• ‘Scientific papers confirm the noise and vibration created can be heard 10km away’;
• And ‘You can be sure all house prices will be badly affected’.

Future community drop-in days to take place in 2010/11. The events will be hosted in the Lower Annex of Byfield Village Hall, between 10am and 7pm on the following days:

• Tuesday the 18th of January 2011;
• Tuesday the 15th of March 2011;
• Tuesday the 17th of May 2011;
• Tuesday the 19th of July 2011;
• Tuesday the 20th of September 2011; and
• Tuesday the 15th of November 2011

< View all news