REACTION from the Den Brook Judicial Review Group following the CLG meeting held to discuss the Den Brook Wind Farm, where noise issues were a key factor:

OBFUSCATION is clearly alive and well. Indeed, one might even say it’s thriving. Despite straightforward and specifically targeted questions aimed for addressing widespread concerns, the Den Brook developer somehow managed to leave us as much in the dark as we had been before the meeting began.

All we required was a clear and honest explanation of whether our hard-won noise controls were in danger of being watered-down. Is that too much to ask when the Den Brook neighbourhood is about to be transformed from a tranquil pastoral landscape into a huge industrial electricity factory? We even submitted our questions well in advance, trusting in decency between fellow human beings and giving corporate developer RES the opportunity to respond in a timely, considered and truthful manner.

But it wasn’t to be. We were simply told the noise measurement scheme was robust; tested by the foremost acoustics experts in the land, what’s more! How dare we question the integrity of such an esteemed body when it’s such a valued part of the wind industry supply chain and refuses point blank to answer our concerns.

We are mindful of the unfortunate, bewildered and innocent bystanders living around the Fullabrook wind farm just north of Barnstaple. They’ve already had to endure three-and-a-half years of unremitting noise and vibrations from the turbines sited there. There’s more, much more. The villagers of Graveley near Cambridge record excessive amplitude modulated wind turbine noise for around 50 per cent of nights. Try sleeping with that.

The local Borough Council are trumped by the industry’s carefully constructed noise assessment guidance and have resorted to issuing a “Power of Motion” for the government to intervene.

Nevertheless, don’t despair Den Brook. The Community Liaison Group, itself frustrated with the onslaught of duplicitous responses, formally passed a motion seeking written answers and clarification from not just the Den Brook Developer but also the local Council who is of course charged with ensuring the neighbourhood isn’t acoustically harmed.

Our question is simply this: “Does stage 4(c) of the Den Brook developer’s noise measurement scheme water-down its obligation to comply with noise condition 20?” Is that too difficult a question to answer or could it be they just don’t really give a damn when a possibility of reduction in corporate welfare enters into the equation?

• See meeting report in news.

Alan Quick