Wind turbine seminars

A short series of three half day workshops entitled ‘Supporting Planning Practice for Wind Turbine Developments’, held at the end of October at Government Offices South West in Bristol, have received very positive feedback and requests for repeat events

The workshops, organised jointly by The Landmark Practice, Regen SW and the RTPI, all focused on providing basic skills training to help local authority planning officers to address the specific demands of wind turbines in planning.

The seminars covered all aspects of wind turbine development, from drafting of planning policy, project inception, EIA screening and scoping and wind turbine technology basics, through an understanding of the developers perspective and dealing with community wind applications, to management of the development process and planning applications, wind farm conditions, dealing with appeals and sources of expert support.

Copies of the presentations made at the seminars will soon be avaiable at the RTPI Environmental Planning and Protection website.

The three half-day sessions, led by The Landmark Practice, will be held over a period of 2 days.  Aimed at a

range of skill levels, the seminars will provide basic to technical skills training to help local authority planning

officers to address specific demands of wind turbines in planning. The workshops will provide technical information to planning officers preparing energy and sustainable development policy documents, and those dealing with planning applications for wind turbine developments; technical issues of wind turbine technology; key impacts e.g. aircraft radar, noise, telecoms, ecology; planning for community scale wind including understanding process, best practice and

liaison with support agencies; EIA screening & scoping; planning process & best practice, delivering mitigation, framing planning conditions.

For more information contact: Nicola Gough at network.manager@rtpi.org.uk, Gemma Melvill at

Gemma.melvill@thelandmarkpractice.com or Cheryl Hiles at chiles@regensw.co.uk