Planning battle ends in approval for 80-metre wind turbine in Bishop's Castle set to power '650 homes'
A community enterprise set up to provide clean energy to Bishop's Castle was celebrating victory after planners gave an 80-metre wind turbine the thumbs up.
The project will see a 1-Megawatt turbine built on farmland to the southeast of Bishop's Castle, with power generated used to supply heat energy to up to 650 properties in the south Shropshire town through an innovative low carbon heating project.
The turbine is planned to power a series of interconnected heat pumps, linked via underground cabling, and export excess electricity back to the grid via a connection on Church Lane.
Bishop's Castle Community College and the Sparc Leisure Centre could also benefit from the scheme, which is planned to generate electricity for a period of up to 30 years.
Delighted applicant Shropshire and Telford Community Energy, a community benefit society set up to create community-owned clean energy schemes, said the scheme would save 28,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide over its 30-year lifetime - and said the goodwill shown for the project was "encouraging".
The application received nine expressions of support - but several objectors to the scheme criticised it as a "damaging development with a very negative visual impact" with an "overwhelming" effect on the area's natural beauty.
A heritage assessment submitted with the proposals concluded there was likely to be a "minor level of visual harm" to the three medieval scheduled sites, namely the castle at Bishop’s Castle and medieval motte mounds at Colebatch and Lower Down.
In a letter dated March 6, Historic England expressed concerns relating to the scheme on heritage grounds, and asked for a more detailed impact assessment to be carried out.
However planners decided the "less than substantial" level of harm to the visual setting was outweighed by the environmental benefits of the scheme.
"The proposed wind turbine is a community initiative to provide renewable energy from a single structure with a temporary 30-year lifespan, and would make a valuable contribution to supporting the transition to net zero, outweighing the less than substantial harm identified," wrote Shropshire Council's planning officer in their report.
Shropshire and Telford Community Energy director Dave Green said the decision marked the end of a four-year effort to gain approval for the scheme , which he said had required "a lot of effort and conviction".
"The level of support we've received for this application and the wider heat network project has been very encouraging. The idea that we can take energy out of the wind and turn it into heat replacing oil boilers is very popular," he said.
"I'd like to say thank you to all who've been involved and supportive of the project, particularly Bishop’s Castle Town Council who gave their unanimous support for the application."
The application and decision can be viewed on Shropshire Council's planning portal using reference 25/00177/FUL.
