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Advice to Margaret King

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Enquiry

From
Margaret King
Date advice given
16 October 2017
Enquiry type
Email

I came to **** in 1956 with my husband, the farm has been my life, providing work place and home, where we raised 3 children.

My husband passed away in 2010 and I now live here with my son and we rely on farming our 80 acres for income, which is becoming more difficult to achieve due to changing markets etc.

I am very upset, that without our agreement, this massive substation can violate the quality of my life by ruining the beautiful location of our home. We are looking into farm diversification ideas too, which rely on the peaceful, rural nature of where we live.

Our house was flooded in 1982, as the adjacent stream could not contain excessive storm water. I am very concerned about increased flood risk, will there be more run off water from the substation than our stream can cope with?

I am retired and enjoy the peace and tranquillity of my life here, and strongly object to Vattenfall building giant substations so close by.

Advice given

As the project has not yet been submitted to the Planning Inspectorate (the Inspectorate), we have no formal powers to intervene on consultees behalf. I would therefore encourage you to contact the developer directly to make your concerns heard as the Applicant has a statutory duty to take your views into account. However, if you feel your comments are not being taken into account, I would advise you to write to your local authority and set out why you think the Applicant is failing to conduct its consultation properly. Your comments should be taken into account when the local authority sends the Inspectorate its comments on whether the Applicant has fulfilled its consultation duties. The local authority’s comments on the Applicant’s consultation will be taken into account when the Acceptance Inspector makes their decision whether to accept the application for Examination.

A copy of your correspondence has been placed on our records and will be presented to the Inspector at Acceptance, together with the application documents and local authorities’ comments on the Applicant’s consultation.

After the decision has been made regarding whether to accept the application for Examination all documents used to inform the decision will be published on our website. If the application for development consent is formally accepted you will be able to submit your views in relation to the project which will be considered by the Examining Authority during the Examination. The Inspectorate has published a series of advice notes which explain the Examination process, including information on how to get involved; of particular interest are advice notes 8.1 to 8.5. These are available at: https://infrastructure.planninginspectorate.gov.uk/legislation-and-advice/advice-notes

We also recently published a Frequently Asked Questions document regarding Pre-application consultation and this can be viewed on our website here: https://infrastructure.planninginspectorate.gov.uk/wp-content/ipc/uploads/projects/General/General-Advice-00632-1-170702%20s47%20Community%20Consultation%20FAQ.pdf.