Public meeting on the Kintyre Array: more sham consultation

Marine Scotland’s Consultation Workshop on the Scottish Government’s Draft Plan for Offshore Wind took place a week ago on Monday 10th January 2011.

The focus of the meeting in Campbeltown was the situation with Scottish and Southern Energy’s proposed location for the Kintyre Array offshore windfarm – so close inshore it challenges the use of the word ‘offshore’.

If the proposal for this wind farm is allowed to proceed in this location, the precedent will be set for ‘offshore’ windfarms to be what the rest of would call ‘inshore’ or even ‘on the beach’. This one barely gets its feet wet.

It is indisputable that the Kintyre Array is alarmingly close inshore, overbearingly present and undermining the impact and operation of serious commercial developments – like the Machrihanish Dunes Golf Course, alongside the Old Tom Morris designed Machrihanish course, both fringed by a glorious and emergingly important surfing beach.

The planned turbine array also lies right across the route of boats and yachts up the west coast of the Mull of Kintyre, to Islay, Jura, Crinan, Oban, and Tobermory via the Sound of Jura, the Sound of Lorn, Loch Linnhe and the Sound of Mull.

With telling succinctness, this has been said to be as sensible as: ‘putting bollards across a motorway’.

This has been licensed by the Crown Estate Commissioners (of which more below) with no care for other than the commercial convenience of the operator, Scottish and Southern Energy.

Kintyre folk are not against the windfarm. They are implacably opposed to its being sited in this location. They are not nimby’s and they indisputably have right on their side in the argument. But will this make a blind bit of difference?

The purpose of the meeting

This was intended, after the public consultation period on the draft plan, to do three things:

• inform the audience about the outcomes of the Nationwide consultation
• check that the published summary of responses was representative of local views
• ensure that nothing had been missed during the consultation process.

None of this has anything at all to do with the word ‘workshop’ – which is, in today’s usage, a collective working session where all present contribute to its outcomes.

This session was one way traffic and, from the evidence of senior and highly informed attendees, when audience members pointed out substantial omissions producing unsafe outcomes, they were simply waffled out.

Contributors pointed out, for instance, that:

• Logan Air’s response, detailing their safety fears in relation to the flight path to Campbeltown Airport – was missing
• Campbeltown Yacht Club’s response in relatin to the impact of the proposed location on the leisure sailing important to Argyll – was missing
• The Marine Policy Statement to which the Clyde Fisherman’s Association had referred was not mentioned in the responses summary; nor was the CFA’s concern that the imposition of this plan would prejudice the outcome of the potential for Kintyre to become a designated Marine Protection Area.
• The closing date for submissions to Ministers had been set before a previously scheduled meeting could happen, between the Royal Yacht Association and government officials about the sea safety issues of the Kintyre Array location.
• Concerns on the limitations of the SSE sponsored Shipping Study had not been included.

At the meeting, matters that had been missed during the consultation were raised – including the risk of coastal scour in tidal deflection from the tower platforms; light flicker effects similar to strobing from the rhythmic turn of the turbine aerofoils; and threats to the habitat of the Burnet Moth, a rare and brightly coloured day-flying moth.

Having pointed out this swathe of significant omissions, those present were anxious to be assured that they will now be added to the final report to Scottish Ministers.

Bob Miller, Chair of the Kintyre Offshore Windfarm Action Group, noted cynically that in response to this anxiety: ‘… officials were very vague as to what the shape of the final document to Ministers would be or who would actually make the final decision regarding the plan and how’.

In contrast to this he observed that: ‘ They were clear, however, that a post-adoption statement would detail the reasons for the ultimate decision’.

So far, so undemocratically predictable.

The devaluing of reality

This, now common, process abuses people by failing to take genuine account of very real difficulties they raise.

Worst of all it debases reality itself, removing its impact on decision taking, distancing it and making it strangely impotent by replacing it with these box-ticking exercises.

Did we consult? Yes. Did we publish the responses? Yes. Did we make sure people knew this? Yes.

Job done.

But there is another picture?

Did we identify serious difficulties raised? No. Did we explore the impact of these difficulties on the proposal? No. Did we amend the proposal to accommodate the most serious of the difficulties pointed out to us? No. Did we admit that serious difficulties had been raised? No. But we ticked all boxes we were asked to tick, so everything’s OK.

Real job not done.

The greatest concern of all – and the most bizarre methodology

Marine Scotland has employed consultants ABPMer to undertake the Strategic Habitats Regulation Assessment (HRA) and the socio-economic studies that will accompany the eventual submission of the plan to Ministers.

An early problem quickly became clear at the meeting when Dr Stephen Hull explained that the Habitats Regulation Assessment started in October 2010 and had to be finished by the end of January 2011. The sheer speed of this study seemed alarmingly dismissive, failing to convince those present that the rich diversity of Kintyre’s wildlife was of any serious concern.

But the bomb dropped when Dr Hull made it clear that the Habitats Regulation Assessment will resolutely not be site specific.

It will be pitched at a national level. It will only take account of already designated sites of ecological importance; and will focus mainly on mitigation measures that developers should take to minimise impacts.

This beggars scientific method, ignoring the specific and imposing a bland generality which may well bear little relation to any one location.

Windfarms, on and offshore and, as here, inshore,  are  not going to be generally located. They are going to be very specifically located.

With outcomes to be assessed on a regional and not a specific level, there was profound unease at the meeting. This means that Kintyre data will be added in with the Tiree and Islay sites where the benefits of the planned developments might be said to outweigh the negative impacts (by half of Tiree), whereas the opposite is the case for Kintyre. Kintyre’s exclusion from the final plan, as an individual site, will leave the impacts diluted by the planned aggregated with other sites.

It would be hard to find a more intellectually dishonest and unscientific procedure than this.

It sets a way of working which stains the notion of the independent Scotland to which this Scottish Government adheres.

This ridiculous and manipulative procedure simply cannot and must not be accepted. The Government should take immediate pains to refresh so negative a modus operandi.

The driving role of the Crown Estate Commissioners

Disturbing evidence came in the revelation at this meeting that the need for a National Offshore Plan for Wind and accompanying Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) had been triggered by the actions of the Crown Estate Commissioners.

These grandly titled Westminster civil servants manage the rights and interests contained in the portfolio known as ‘the Crown Estate’, in the interests of the people and with profits going to the UK Exchequer.

They began to enter into commercial Exclusivity Agreements, leasing the Scottish seabed to power generating companies for Offshore Wind farm sites around the coast.

The implication, from what was said at the Campbeltown meeting by Phil Hughes of Marine Scotland, was that this was done beyond the initial ken of the Scottish Government.

The strange compliance of the Scottish Government

The Scottish Government evidently adopted the sites leased by the Crown Estate Commissioners into the Draft Plan and labelled them as first phase ‘priority sites’, with a subsequent phase of areas designated as ‘medium term opportunities’ – one of which is South of the Mull of Kintyre, adjacent to an area now available for tidal power leasing.

Bob Miller says: ‘… there was anger in the meeting that the Crown Estates should have the ability to enter into such commercial arrangements regarding Scottish sea beds without regard to any planning or impact framework and without consultation with local communities’.

He said too that: ‘There was equal anger that the Government should then just adopt the 10 sites into their draft plan without demur. Phil Hughes said that nine out of the ten sites had passed a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) to go into the plan (albeit the Mk1 prototype SEA that is under development) and there was incredulity that Kintyre had passed the test for having acceptable visual impact, but the Bell Rock (and earlier) St.Kilda sites had been ruled out on this criteria’.

The Scottish Government needs now to explain to the electorate – and with the Scottish Election 2011 coming up on 5th May – it had better make shift to do so – why it has never chosen to exercise the devolved powers it possesses to change the ownership of the Scottish rights and interests managed by the Crown Estate Commissioners.

It has used these powers in the case of feudal tenancies. However, for some indeterminable reason, it has fought shy of using these powers to change the ownership of Scotland’s single major asset, its sea bed – a permanent asset for the future. This sits oddly with an administration dedicated to the achievement of Scottish independence and one still echoing the cry of ‘It’s Scotland’s Oil’. Today the big issue is: ‘It’s Scotland’s sea bed’.

Some time ago, For Argyll asked Argyll and Bute’s MSP, Jim Mather, what was impeding the Scottish Government in taking this necessary action. He passed our inquiry to the responsible Cabinet Secretary, Richard Lochhead and his officials. We have had no response. We will persist.

The Kintyre Array and the ‘consultation’ process

Reason, evidence and economic development together dictate the moving of this windfarm to a genuinely offshore location.

Integrity of process and earning respect for government dictate the imperative of making ‘consultation’ live up to its name.

As it is, ‘consultation’ is a fundamentally dishonest process. It abuses people, ignores what doesn’t fit the prior intention, imposes plans hatched without regard to physical and present reality and undermines democracy.

This is a dangerous road to travel. One day, even in the most passive and respectful of communities, civil disobedience will be all that is left.

NOTE: Here is the Kintyre Offshore Windfarm Action Group’s formal response to the omissions from the Marine Scotland summary of responses to the Government’s consultation on offshore wind: Offshore Wind Energy Consultation Process: Omissions from Marine Scotland Summary

The images illustrating this article are photomontages showing the planned Kintyre Array,  from the top:

• from Westport
• from Machrihanish