Highland Council objects to 1.6km diversion of controversial Beauly-Denny power line after the Scottish Government’s Energy Consents Unit refused to extend the consultation window, effectively preventing the south planning applications committee from having a say
Democratically-elected councillors are being sidelined over plans for a power line upgrade on the hills above a Highland beauty spot.
That's the accusation being made by Highland Council planning officers after the local authority lodged a formal objection to plans for an upgrade of power lines running near Tomich and Pladda Falls.
The proposal is to divert a 1.6km stretch of the existing Beauly-Denny overhead line in Guisachan Forest as part of efforts to tie-in to separate but linked plans for the controversial new 400kV Bingally substation three kilometres south of Tomich. The power line upgrade would include a temporary diversion immediately to the west of the existing line and consist of two new pylon towers. These would then later be replaced by two new permanent pylons to the east of the existing line’s route.
Although any decision on the substation lies with Highland Council, the power line upgrade will ultimately be decided by the Scottish Government's energy consents unit - with the council only able to note its approval or objection of the plans as part of the wider consultation process.
But the timing of the power line application meant that there was "no possibility" of the council's south planning applications committee meeting in time to voice its views ahead of the consultation's August cut off date.
And a request for the consultation to be extended to October 15 - the same deadline as consultations on the proposal for the Bingally substation - was rejected by the energy consents unit despite the local authority highlighting the extreme time constraints and interconnected nature of the plans.
Following that knock-back the local authority has now lodged a formal objection in which it directly criticises the energy consent unit's decision to stick to the original timescale when both it and the Bingally substation are interlinked projects.
The objection letter, written by Grant Baxter, principal planner at the council's strategic projects team, said: "The consultation on this application was sent to The Highland Council (THC) on June 18. and the deadline for the council to provide its response was (Sunday) August 17.
"The council’s request for additional time to provide its response was rejected by [the] energy consents unit on the grounds that as an overhead line proposal, this application is defined as a priority application for transmission infrastructure.
"I would note that notification of the application was sent to Highland Council from [the] energy consents unit on June 18. There was a meeting of the council’s south planning applications committee that day, and the next meeting of the committee is not scheduled until August 22.
"In other words, there was no possibility of the case being reported to the relevant committee of council in the two-month timescale."
He added that the short timeframe had also resulted in "a number of outstanding consultees" who had also yet to voice their opinion - making a considered council stance even more difficult to reach.
He continued: "As stated in our original letter to you requesting a time extension, we had (and still have) a number of outstanding consultees and a high volume of similar applications in what is a holiday period, where many consultees required more time to respond."
Two other factors were also cited by Mr Baxter as playing a role in the council’s decision to object.
The first was that it “has not demonstrated that sufficient regard has been given to reasonably mitigating of the development impacts… on communities and individual dwellings, including residential amenity and visual impact, landscape and visual impacts, public access, including impacts on core paths, impacts on road traffic, impacts on the historic environment, impacts on biodiversity including birds, impacts on trees, woods and forests, watercourses and peatland and cumulative impacts”.
And the third was that the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) had objected to the Bingally substation on “two key matters”, one of which also formed grounds for Sepa to lodge a “holding objection” on the power line diversion - the impact of peat extraction on carbon rich soils.
Mr Baxter argued that this illustrates that the two proposals are interlinked, and should be considered together in October.
“This [Bingally] planning application and the application for the overhead line tie in, subject of this letter, are intrinsically linked, and indeed the overhead line tie in will rely on much of the infrastructure to be built to construct the Bingally substation.
“It is therefore Highland Council’s clear view that both applications should be considered together, as stated in our original letter.”