Inspector of Planning rules in favour of Kiveton Heat & Power
04 February 2010
A hollow victory indeed as we suspected that this would be the outcome of the appeal process - and stated as much at the committee meeting at which it was first thrown out. So there are no real winners here.
It is tempting to gloat and say we told you so but that would only raise further ill-feeling towards this project - and we have had our post decision fun regarding the fat lady singing etc. The Inspector of Planning has upheld this application to be an eminently sensible and well presented case that ticks all the boxes for being a well sited local electricity generation and landfill avoidance scheme - which is pretty much how the Rotherham Borough Council Planning Dept presented it to the committee in the first place. Click here for the Inspector's report
This planning application should have taken three to four months but instead took sixteen months having been held up by an ill-prepared planning committee judged by the Inspector of Planning to acted unreasonably.
Apart from the opportunity cost to the applicant the real losers here are the Council Tax payers of Rotherham. We may have been awarded the full costs of this appeal (and this only happens where an Inspector regards a committee to have acted unreasonably), but we have lost the opportunity to start this project at a much earlier date and therefore significant potential income - not to mention the fact that as these types of planning issues drag on through the system National targets for renewable energy provision drift beyond what is possible.
We will now seek to re-engage the local population and with that in mind it is our intention to set up a residents liason group. It is our aim to make the people living around the Kiveton area proud that their electrical energy is being generated by 'green' means and we will prove that they should have no fear of our highly clean process or worry about vehicle movements - we maintain that this plant will actually reduce lorry movements as the site will export it's product down a cable rather than on the back of a lorry as is the case right now. So if we can cut the emotion out of the dialogue and just look at the facts we can guarantee that we will be good neighbours. Any non-politicians interested in joining a liason group should get in touch with us through this web site.
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