Advice to Biddisham Against Pylons
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- Biddisham Against Pylons
- Date advice given
- 15 October 2013
- Enquiry type
E-mail and attachment received by the Planning Inspectorate from Mr John Hayes below:
National Grid Bridgwater Seabank Connection. Consultation Stage 4 Biddisham Against Pylons Response Biddisham lies in National Grid Section B, just south and in view of the Mendip Hills AONB. The proposed NG pylon route runs through open flat countryside, parallel with and in full view of all properties in Biddisham Lane for a distance of approximately 3 kilometres. This paper is written more in hope than expectation. Consultation with National Grid over the past 4 years has, in the main, been pointless. Anyone with an IQ larger than their shoe size knows that NG had already decided on the route corridor and the type of transmission long before the initial announcement in 2009. There has been no real consultation only intransigence shown by NG and their agency staff, a never ending stream of misinformation and occasionally prevarication. We find it difficult to understand why NG refuse to acknowledge independent reports and costings which clearly show that the difference in undergrounding transmission lines, using whole life costings, (including loss of power, maintenance costs, modern technology) show that the margins are significantly smaller than those published by NG. With the announcement that Hinkley C will not be producing electricity for at least 9 years then there is time for NG to re-look at the entire way that electricity is transmitted. There is time to call a halt to this process and submit two proposals with 2 separate and accurate whole life costings of overhead and underground (using GIL?s in a tunnel) and let the Secretary of State decide what is best for the countryside and the people who live there. National Grid should demand that all new and upgraded lines will in the future be underground. This could be a pivotal moment in the sea change in electricity transmission, we have to start sometime. If it is not the Hinkley-Seabank connection, then these lines will blight the Somerset Levels for the next 60-80 years. It will affect my generation, my children?s generation, my grand-children?s generation and a further 3 future generations. That cannot be right! If we start now, then within a few decades, all transmission lines will be out of sight and our countryside will be without a blemish. Remember it was only 20 years ago when the default position was that Water Companies pumped raw sewage into the sea. That is now agreed as being totally unacceptable?. Overhead transmission lines are unacceptable too. Yes, there will be a cost, but there was a cost to the consumer to make our rivers and seas clean and healthy, it has been proven that there is also a willingness to pay for undergrounding of transmission lines. With regard to the effect on our village if the lines still go ahead, we will see pylons breaking up the vista towards Brent Knoll. We will have a sealing end compound within our views and for a period of 3-4 years a works compound, the full details of which we still do not know and works traffic leaving and entering the A38 (Red Route) at one of the most dangerous stretches of road in Somerset. The lack of detail given to us by NG regarding the works compound and the highway matters is astounding. We have no idea the size of the compound although they have earmarked 25 acres to accommodate it. We have no idea of how the access road from the A38 is going to be formed. A local farmer from Biddisham Lane whose farm tracks have been designated by NG as maintenance roads has been informed that a newly erected bridge over the Old River Axe will not be strong enough at a maximum 17.5 tons but no one can tell me why! Biddisham Lane is no more than a single track road with passing places. It has been designated by Somerset County Highways as not suitable for lorries. Peter Bryant told us in an open meeting that these tracks were for maintenance vans only, if that were the case, why is a 17.5 GVW bridge not substantial enough? Lack of detail or more likely economy of the truth, again? We have also heard that NG has, at this late stage, ascertained that the River Axe is deeper than they first envisaged. This may mean that it will not be possible to run the lines underground, in which case they may have to bridge the river. There is no detail available, no one in NG can tell us what it will look like, how secure it will be, how wide it will be and how high it will be. How can we consult on so many unknowns? There now seems to be a rush to get this to PINS and at the same time not providing enough detail for us to be able to consult/question. This paper has been written, in the main, to let PINS know that the consultations with NG have been far short of what was expected due to an almost complete lack of detail within the proposals.
Advice given
Response, letter sent via e-mail, from the Planning Inspectorate attached.