Preferred Options

Core Strategy - original Preferred Options

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What is Happening

In July/August 2012 we all had the opportunity to comment on the NCC's "Issues and Options" document.

At that time, Longhorsley Parish Council circulated a leaflet which highlighted the key issues for Longhorsley residents.

Since then, the Longhorsley Tree has summarised the public's responses to those key issues.

All of these documents are still available on the Issues and Options page.

The NCC has now published their "Core Strategy Preferred Options Consultations" Document (174 A4 pages),

"A Brief Guide to the Core Strategy Preferred Options Consultation" (5 A4 pages) and a Preferred Options Comments Form (4 A4 pages)

The NCC also delivered a “Help to plan the future of Northumberland” leaflet about the consultation to every house in Northumberland.

If you need to contact the NCC about the Core Strategy, the direct number is 01670 623 629

In February 2013 Longhorsley Parish Council has published a "Preferred Options" leaflet (12 A5 pages) summarising the key issues and

a "Preferred Options Response Form" (1 double-sided A4 page).

These documents are available here as PDFs - to download, View and then [File] [Download]

NCC's Preferred Options document did not include Preferred Policies for Housing, Employment or Green Belt.

Details of the Housing, Employment or Green Belt consultation are on the Preferred Options 2 page.

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Key points in the "Preferred Options" document:

• no Policies for Housing or Green Belt.

• (These will come next, in a new stage - "Further Engagement on Housing and Green Belt")

• the tiering approach for settlements has been abandoned and the Delivery Areas have been recast

• final adoption of the Core Strategy has been delayed by a year from Winter 2013 to "Winter 2014/15"

  • (although the Core Strategy webpage says "Adoption - Summer 2014")

• new minimum distance between wind turbines and homes is six times the turbine blade tip height

Minimum Distance between wind turbines and homes

At a recent Core Strategy workshop NCC planners presented maps showing the impact of 750m, 1000m, 1500m and 2000m Separation Distances - 750m would be the Separation Distance for 125m turbines under their 6 x height rule.

A 750m rule would allow wind farms at Fenrother and Rayburn Lake - link to maps.

These are some of the examples from other councils:

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Comments made about the Preferred Options document - updated April 27th

It is now more than a month since the consultation closed and NCC Planners have only added a couple of comments in the last few days.

This should be the final analysis - we will not update the figures unless there are significant changes.

NCC Planners have processed 4,348 answers from 608 individuals, couples, families and organisations.

On average, each contributor has answered more than 7 questions and each question has 72 answers.

This compares to over 1,100 people who gave over 12,500 comments about the Issue and Options document.

Question 40

Question 40 (preferred policy for assessing large scale wind energy developments) has the most comments - 312 over 4.3 x average).

8 people classified their response as being "Support" and 271 as "Objection".

Of those that objected, 8 (7 RE companies and 1 individual) objected because they didn't want any separation distance.

The other 263 objectors were objecting to wind farm development - 162 want a separation distance of 12 x turbine tip height or 1.5km

and 23 want a separation distance of 2km.

Many people gave multiple answers to Question 40 - the 312 answers were given by 283 consultees.

159 of them (56%) supported The Northumberland and Newcastle Society

National Policy

Both sides of the argument said the Overarching National Policy Statement for Energy (EN-1) supported their position.

Energy companies say applications should be supported unless adverse effects clearly outweigh the benefits.

Others say national policy states that significant adverse impacts should be avoided not outweighed.

This is a summary of what the National Policy says:

Section 1.1.2 Says authorities must decide an application in accordance with National Policy unless to do so would result in adverse impacts from the development outweighing the benefits.

Section 4.1.3 Says when weighing its adverse impacts against its benefits authorities should take into account potential benefits and potential adverse impacts, including any long-term and cumulative adverse impacts, as well as any measures to avoid, reduce or compensate for any adverse impacts.

Section 5.11.9 Says authorities should not grant development consent unless it is satisfied that the proposals will meet the following aims:

● avoid significant adverse impacts on health and quality of life from noise;

● mitigate and minimise other adverse impacts on health and quality of life from noise; and

● where possible, contribute to improvements to health and quality of life through the effective management and control of noise.

Ponteland Green Belt Comments

Just over 100 people submitted answers to 7 questions in line with suggestions made on the pontelandgreenbelt.co.uk website.

About 300 Ponteland residents made comments at the Issues and Options stage - see detail

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Longhorsley Parish Council comments

The PC submission to the Preferred Options consultation is available to view here - Link

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Preferred Options documents

To download a document - View the document and then [File] [Download]