The focus of Scotland’s multimillion-pound wind energy industry will be on a small Highland community hall today as a landmark legal debate takes place.
A public local inquiry into the Glenmorie Wind Farm LLP proposal for a 34-turbine windfarm in Glenmorie, Easter Ross, is due to get under way at Ardross Community Hall this morning.
The inquiry was triggered by Highland Council lodging a formal objection to the development on the grounds that it would have a detrimental impact on the landscape. The first business for the Scottish Government reporter in charge of the inquiry, Katrina Rice, will be to decide on submissions from leading planning lawyers calling for it to be shelved.
John Campbell QC, acting for campaign group Save Our Straths, and John Muir Trust lawyer Ian Kelly will argue that the inquiry should be postponed until the outcome of a Scottish Government legal appeal.
The government is challenging Lady Clark’s ruling that the Viking Energy windfarm in Shetland was “incompetent” as it did not have a generation licence from the electricity regulators.
The lawyers claim that, as Glenmorie Wind Farm also has no licence, the inquiry is unlawful and should not go ahead, but the developer claims it is following standard industry practice.
The reporter’s decision to either go ahead with the inquiry or postpone it is one of the first legal tests of the watershed ruling.
A Save Our Straths spokesman said last night: “There is no doubt that it does have national significance given that, if the reporter decides that the inquiry tomorrow is unlawful, than all the planning applications in the pipeline where the developer hasn’t got an electricity generating licence will also be unlawful, at least until February, when the appeal against the Shetland judgment will be made.”
A spokeswoman for the developer said: “The Scottish Government’s environmental consents and deployment unit has written to all participants this week to say that the Glenmorie public inquiry will go ahead and we welcome this confirmation.
“It is at the reporter’s discretion to admit additional hearing submissions at the start of the inquiry.”