Parish council plan for different wind turbine site (From The Oxford Times)

Parish council plan for different wind turbine site

7:53pm Thursday 20th August 2009 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
• Comments(2)

A PARISH council said last night it had identified an alternative site for a planned wind turbine at Horspath.

The £3m turbine would have a combined blade and tower height of just under 430ft, taller than the turbine on the M4 near Reading.

As reported yesterday, Oxford City Council wants to build a single commercial-scale turbine on council-owned land across the road from the Horspath Road Athletics Track, with a planning application expected to be submitted in 2011.

But it has emerged that Horspath Parish Council may put some of its own land forward as an alternative site, in the hope the parish council rather than the city council would benefit financially from the scheme.

Parish councillor David Horsley said: “We did not know anything about this because the city council chose not to tell us about it.

“The parish council wants to keep all its options open.

“The parish owns about 18 acres between the sports ground and the village. Our land may be a more suitable site.

“If they are going to build it, why should not the parish council benefit financially instead?”

Mr Horsley said the parish council would consider the plan at a meeting on Tuesday, September 1.

The development would be built by organisation Partnerships for Renewables, with an annual payment for ‘rent’.

Horspath was one of four sites considered for a turbine by the city council.

Partnerships’ Tom Brinicombe said the site was chosen because it was a suitable distance from housing, with no environmentally designated land nearby. He said it was hoped the wind turbine could supply electricity to businesses in the vicinity.

Gordon Roper, the former chairman of Blackbird Leys Parish Council, who lives in Garsington, welcomed the news.

He said: “I think the wind turbine will make a lovely local landmark. I really think they look beautiful. I always look out for the one on the M25 when I’m down there.”

But Horspath resident Graham Roper, of Oxford Road, said: “People living in the village on higher ground will be overlooking it.

“It is an open field. It should go somewhere further from houses.”

And in a survey of 500 residents carried out by the parish council last year, 60 per cent said they were against building a turbine near the village – three in five people strongly opposed the idea.

Some residents complained the turbine would dominate the local landscape and ruin views from many homes in the village.