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Under consideration PE1885: Make offering Community Shared Ownership mandatory for all windfarm development planning proposals
Calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to make Community Shared Ownership a mandatory requirement to be offered as part of all planning proposals for windfarm development.
Previous action taken
Residents of Kintyre and Knapdale have engaged with 6 Community Councils who have in turn been in contact with Argyll and Bute Council.
The Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Fergus Ewing has been approached and representation has also been made to Jenni Minto MSP regarding some of the companies who are refusing shared ownership asking her to email a particular company about their stance. It is understood she is arranging a meeting with Michael Matheson, Cabinet Secretary, to discuss this.
Background information
Currently, Community Shared Ownership is a recommendation of the revised Scottish Government ‘Good Practice Principles for Community Benefits from Onshore Renewable Energy Developments’ (2019), but many opportunist developers do not offer shared ownership on agreements to offer fair and effective CSO opportunities to impacted communities.
Because of the unprecedented scale of windfarm development, a piecemeal approach to securing CSO is beyond the scope of small communities. Given that development is a national occurrence, a coherent political response is required which mandates that developers must offer and secure 15% CSO investment. Unless this is in place Government will fail local communities, and will not achieve the target for Community and locally owned energy. Increasingly windfarm developers build windfarms to immediately sell them on to Capital Investment Firms, and, with no requirement to offer CSO, it is a seemingly added and unnecessary complication to their ability to sell, so offers are withheld. This is compounded by subsidies no longer being available.
106 signatures
This petition is now under consideration
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