Representation by Ian Cook
- Date submitted
- 9 January 2020
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
I support the representations being made by SASES and Friston Parish Council. To site a substation so close to Friston, the listed church is only 250 yards away, is appalling. This quiet village will be destroyed forever if this venture goes ahead. The peace would be shattered by constant noise from the harmonic filters and the clear night sky we now enjoy would be gone by constant bright lighting of the substation. I love walking everyday on the many footpaths around the village and now some of these will be obliterated and others diverted around the many acres of concrete. I live in the middle of the village in Grove Road and there is always a constant worry of flooding after heavy rain. The surface water that runs off the fields and down Grove Road often causes flooding in the middle of the village and down to Low Road where two months ago several homes had water running through them. SPR has not considered surface flooding in their plans only flooding from rivers. The quality of living so close to this substation would be intolerable and then there are plans for The National Grid Ventures Interconnectors to build next to the SPR site for Nautilus and Eurolink as well as the expansion of Galloper and Greater Gabbard. Trying to sell a house now with this threat hanging over the village is nigh impossible. Recently several houses with 'Sold' signs in Friston have very quickly gone back on the market once the potential buyers have read their survey. If permission was granted in favour of SPR's substation there would years of hell for the residents of Friston and for the people living in the whole area. Traffic would be disastrous as new roads would have to be built. Grove Road and Mill Road leading into the village are all but single lanes with no pedestrian pavements. There would be years of bringing in the substation infrastructure and also the 300 workers SPR say will be arriving everyday. The local roads could not cope. Of course once in the area a lot of the HGVs will travel along the 8 Kilometres of 60 metre wide cable corridor which is planned to cut a swathe through the countryside from Thorpeness to Friston. This is ridiculous when they should have used their original plan to connect from Bawdsey to Bramford. There is no joined up thinking between all these companies so the building works could go on for years and years and SPR say that as well as working during the weekdays and Saturdays some of the time it will be 24 hours a day. This quite part of Suffolk will become an industrial estate. There will be no jobs once the building is built and tourism will suffer whilst the works are carried out. Who would want to combat the traffic and inconvenience to get to Snape Maltings or Aldeburgh when you could find some other part of the country to enjoy a holiday. So many jobs already in place will be lost as tourism slumps. This application from SPR must be rejected. Thank you. Ian Cook