Donald Trump in a huff over plans for windfarm near his Scottish golf resort
This article explains that US tycoon Donald Trump has criticised a move to build an offshore windfarm near his golf resort in Scotland after a planning application for 11 turbines was submitted last Friday.
The European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre is a £150m joint venture by utility company Vattenfall, engineering firm Technip and Aberdeen Renewable Energy Group.
In a statement, Trump said: “I am very disappointed that Scotland may allow the development of a wind-power plant directly off Aberdeen’s beautiful coastline.”
What is the relevance of this article? Although it may be in Scotland it reveal the generic challenge rural planners have in reconciling the needs and more often the wants of developers and local communities, even where proposed developments mean more jobs. It is a thankless task and likely to be made more challenging by the National Planning Framework and Neighbourhood Planning proposals now both nearing the statute book.
Some people might say that the answer is for planners to learn to love the rule book a bit less and get out a bit more. I don’t think its quite as simple as that but clearly one of the significant dynamics in the planned shake up of the way the planning system currently works is a significant loss of confidence in our apporach to planning on all sides.
It seems to me the adversarial roots of the way planning is managed and approached need a significant re-think, which needs to start with some of the fundamental values underpinning the way planners are trained.