WE HAVE WON THE WIND TURBINE WAR!
APPEAL DISMISSED - PLANNING REFUSED!

ASWAR is overjoyed on behalf of the local community that the Secretary of State Greg Clark (a member of the Cabinet), has announced that the McAlpine/RES 'Appeal' (and supported - without credibility - by Rugby Council planners) that was in favour of subsidised wind turbines in the Upper Swift Valley, is dismissed and planning permission finally refused.

 

ASWAR Congratulates the Churchover/Cotesbach community. It is fantastic how the community came together to fight for six years and win against two strong armies.

  • Firstly, we have defeated the wind turbine subsidy speculators and can now put them behind us, leaving them to cry over how their scam has not worked.
  • Secondly, it is the Rugby Council planners’ actions that Rugbeians should know about for the future and put in place training and proceedures to not allow it to happen again.

The planners tried to circumvent the democratic process. The electorate correctly hold their elected Councillors accountable for making decisions on planning policy. But the planners ignored the Councillors and decided by themselves to change the Council wind turbine policy from ‘refusal’ to ‘support’ without allowing the councillors to have a say. On top of that they wasted some £20,000 of tax-payer money to hire an expensive lawyer to aggressively attack community representatives at the public Inquiry.

ASWAR welcomes and is encouraged that the government Inspector and Secretary of State, have listened to the people and re-established some democratic trust in the planning system.

The planners, professionals who got it wrong, and have now publicly apologised to the community. We thank them for that.  

Yes, the community is proud to have fought our 'Nimby' battle but we have always also publicised the arguments for the wider national interests and let us all hope it will not be long before the 2008 Climate Change Act is suspended and a sensible national energy policy based on ‘Energy security and affordability for all’ is implemented and important jobs, like in the high energy intensive steel industry, can be saved.

The full decision statement and inspector's report can be found here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/recovered-appeal-land-at-cestersover-farm-cestersover-pailton-rugby-ref-2227479-18-january-2016

The Secretary of State agreed with his Inspector that “the degree of harm to landscape, visual amenity and heritage interests is considerably greater than the appellant or the Council acknowledge.”

ASWAR is confident the Secretary of State will dismiss wind subsidy speculator's recovered appeal following end of 6-day public inquiry

Click on the links below to read ASWAR and Churchover Parish Council's evidence presented at the public inquiry

Latest application ruled INVALID
by Rugby Borough Council!

A third victorious battle in the five year war to defend Churchover/Cotesbach has been won. Rugby planners have been forced to agree with ASWAR and deem the re-application for four wind turbines invalid.

However, this still leaves us with the big, expensive battle - the McAlpine/RES Appeal against the original local rejection with an Inquiry that is planned to start on Wednesday 2nd September in front of a government inspector. He will then report his findings to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Greg Clark, who will finally decide whether what was put in the Tory Manifesto and realised in subsequent planning policy changes, will be implemented or whether the community will be put to the wind turbine dogs.

Though our arguments across a range of local planning issues are strong, what is defining and crucial, is that on June 18th 2015 Greg Clark announced that on-shore windfarms should not be given permission if the local community was against them. By any measurement this local community is against!

ASWAR calls for McAlpine/RES to withdraw their Appeal and stop wasting everybody’s time and money 

In the meantime an enormous amount of time has been put into writing ASWAR’s and Churchover Parish Council’s Proofs of Evidence papers that have been submitted to the Inspector and will be posted on this web site some time after August 6th.

New Churchover Parish Council objection
exemplifies overwhelming local objection 

Churchover Parish Council has now submitted its detailed and compelling objection to the latest windfarm application which can be read here.

Historic England (formerly English Heritage) have repeated their strong objection to this application which can be read here.

Another detailed objection from a Churchover resident is also worth reading here.

McAlpine/RES submit a new application
TIME TO ACT AGAIN!

The community across the Revel District goes into its fifth year under threat from now a new application to build four huge wind turbines that if not fought could be given permission this year to generate millions in subsidy for the next 25 years for speculator McAlpine/RES taken from everybody’s electricity bills, thereby increasing fuel poverty, losing jobs in energy-intensive manufacturing and through the wind’s intermittency helping put at risk the National Grid’s efficient ability to keep the lights on.

However, the winning post is in sight, with legislation promised to stop subsidies for the on-shore wind turbine scam from next year announced by new Secretary of State Amber Rudd, after which it will become unprofitable to build them.

But more importantly, new Government planning policy taking effect from 18th June dictates that windfarms cannot be approved without local backing! We need to continue to demonstrate that this application most definitely does not have local backing so it is vital that everyone objects again now

Following NATS withdrawing its objection to the windfarm, McAlpine/RES have submitted a new planning application which is almost the same as the last one. If you objected to the previous application around Jan 2014, please note that your objection will NOT be carried forward to the new application. Nor is it enough to tell the Borough Council that you maintain your previous objection. Unfortunately, new objections must be sent-in. You can certainly send in a copy of your previous objection, but it MUST be sent in again, mentioning the new Reference Number R15/0908

EMAIL to: nathan.lowde@rugby.gov.uk

or

WRITE to: Nathan Lowde, Rugby Borough Council, Town Hall, Evreux Way, Rugby, CV21 2RR

Please remember to mention your name and address, and the reference number R15/0908, in your objections. The key planning objection is the paragraph below.

The setting of the heritage church in the conservation village, that has dominated the beautiful meandering Upper Swift Valley for 1,000 years, will be industrialised and ruined.

Go to the How To Help section of this web site for more details on how you can help.

BBC Midlands Today wind turbine story featuring Churchover broadcast on 13th April 2015 can now be seen on YouTube

Are NATS putting Aviation Safety at risk for commercial gain?

ASWAR has recently discovered that legal representatives acting on behalf of McAlpine/RES are stating publicly that, as a result of "detailed discussions" between McAlpine/RES and NATS, there is, to quote them directly, "a real possibility that NATS will be in a position to withdraw its objection to the proposal" in advance of the September 2015 Inquiry.

We have therefore emailed and asked Paul Golby, the chairman of NATS to answer several questions relating to this:

  1. Is there any truth to the statement made by McAlpine/RES, and has NATS authorised McAlpine/RES to announce this information?
  2. If NATS is close to withdrawing its objection to this application, please can you provide full details of how this is possible in light of the fact that none of the accepted mitigation schemes can be applied to this development and your own extensive research into understanding the AGA comms impact along with updated guidelines is not scheduled to be completed until March 2016?
  3. Again if NATS is close to withdrawing its objection, what evidence does NATS have to be 100% certain that this particular development would never have any impact on AGA comms from the Pailton radio station and hence put Aviation Safety at risk?
  4. Has McAlpine/RES given or promised to give NATS any funding? Can you please provide us a full schedule of 1) the people or organisations who have provided funds to NATS (and how much) to help pay for your research into this area and 2) the amounts of money you have already and are planning to invest in this area.

Where Aviation Safety is concerned, your previous safeguarding stance and record has rightly in our opinion been to take no risks when the poorly understood issue of AGA comms interference from wind turbines is concerned. Your own research and that of other independent parties has produced evidence that there can be an impact from wind turbines on AGA comms. Until there is a much greater understanding of this issue, backed by an agreed set of updated safeguarding guidelines, developed in line with already announced, (and peer-reviewed) research, should not this be the position that must be maintained by NATS to continue to guarantee the safety of aviation in the UK?

Solar Park - Well done with your Objections!

The proposed 60-acre Solar Park that has been called ‘an abomination’ by our local Conservative Councillor and MP, has generated many objections and will be delayed in going to the planning committee, which will not now be until July at the earliest.

ASWAR and the Parish Council have submitted detailed planning objections while we need everybody to please send a quick individual email to Richard.Redford@rugby.gov.uk
quoting R13/1401 and saying you object.
He has said he is still open to receiving objections.
(see * below for the address to send letters to) 

There is no need to go into long elaborate detail, it is a high number of simple objections that is needed (you don’t need to live locally) and just say whatever you want or some of the following:

  • Solar Parks on good agricultural ground is against Government policy since May 2014. (The two farmers who have farmed this land for over 20 years and the land adjacent, say it has high quality, excellent soil on ideal flat land for grazing or crops. The widow of the previous farm manager quotes the late Fred Green, an important local farmer, who owned over 2,000 acres around the district, that he always said this was the best and most versatile land he owned).
  • It will be an eyesore from every direction, looking like a Prison Camp, with its rows of reflective solar arrays, security fencing and lighting with cameras on high gantries.
  • These speculators should build on brownfield sites and factory and warehouse roofs before using good land and destroying our environment and landscape. There are lots of warehouses around here.
  • The Village has voted 85% against, at a well-attended meeting of 60 in a village of 100 dwellings, where the Chairman of a Solar National Trade Body spoke in favour, with the local Conservative MP and a UKIP MEP against. Government Ministers have stressed that large Solar Parks need local support and involvement, before planners can give a go-ahead.
  • It will industrialise the ‘vital green lung’ between sprawling Rugby warehouses south of the M6 and Lutterworth with its appendage of Magna Park.
  • 25 years is not a ‘temporary’ inconvenience in the life of a village, whose property values will be reduced without compensation.
  • Good agricultural land should not be taken out of food production, by a regressive scam that moves our money into greedy landowner’s pockets, sudsidy speculators and overseas manufacturers, while increasing fuel poverty among the poorer members of the community.
  • It will be an intrusion on the conservation village and heritage assets and historic landscape.
  • Subsidised Solar Parks create small amounts of expensive, intermittent energy that requires inefficiently run ‘spinning’ fossil-fuelled back-up, all of which increases costly electricity bills and reduces British industry competitiveness. The independent OBR (Office of Budget Responsibility) commenting on the recent Government’s Autumn Statement, predicted: Green levies on household energy bills will triple over the next five years to £10 billion as the number of wind turbines and solar parks already permitted are built. NHS go weep!

Thank you, your help is much appreciated by a community under siege now for five years.

the rules say that the planning officer has to present any comments received up to the Friday before the Planning Committee meeting so they are taken into account by Councillors in their determination of the application).

Address for objection letters. Remember to add your own address and R13/1401:

Richard Redford,
Rugby Town Hall,
Evreux Way,
Rugby
CV21 2RR

Secretary of State Eric Pickles Calls-In McAlpine/RES Appeal

Following Secretary of State Pickles Calling-In McAlpine/RES's appeal, ASWAR has given the following Press Release and calls supporters to help raise significant funds. Click here for info on how to donate now

“Air Traffic Safety at risk, as Churchover raises funds to defend community at Called-In Appeal.  

We do not agree that a tiny amount of costly, intermittent energy from wind turbines of the subsidy speculator McAlpine/RES, is more important than Air Traffic Safety, nor the industrialising of an historic conservation village in a vital green lung between Rugby and Lutterworth. 

We are grateful to Mark Pawsey, the local Conservative MP, for his effective lobbying on behalf of the community that has now been under threat for five years, which has persuaded Secretary of State Eric Pickles to immediately Call-In the appeal. 

If the community’s excellent argument is well presented at the Inspector’s Appeal, the Call-In makes it much more likely that the decision will go against the turbines. 

Churchover Parish Council and ASWAR have now launched an appeal to raise significant funds to hire a top lawyer to lead their case. 

David can defeat Goliath.” 

Note 1: The NATS objection to the McAlpine/RES turbines is not because of clutter the turbines may create on their radar screens which has been a major problem for Airports and why NATS objected to 2% of turbine applications in 2013. It is because of interference with their Air-Ground-Air Communications Systems from their Pailton Station which is in direct line-of-sight with the proposed turbines. See http://nats.aero/blog/2013/10/winds-of-change-aviation-and-wind-energy/ 

Irrespective of the Rugby Borough Council Officer’s assurance to the planning committee that there was no possible mitigation available to NATS’s objection and therefore Councillors thought they had no need to add other heritage and landscape objections, ASWAR has a worry about NATS’s open desire to help the wind subsidy speculators. (It has already sunk £14m of the public’s money into trying to mitigate radar interference from wind turbines – an added cost of wind energy) 

Will NATS give-in to political and commercial pressure, cut corners in Air Traffic Safety and withdraw their objection when they come under attack by McAlpine/RES concerning their technical competence at the appeal?   

Note 2: The intermittency of energy from wind turbines requires the National Grid to have fossil-fuelled back-up on inefficient ‘spinning’ reserve, for when there is lack of or too much wind, in order to balance generation and keep the lights-on. The more turbines and solar parks that are built the more out-of-kilter will the balance become. Energy Secretary Ed Davey it is reported will announce this week more costly emergency contingences for the National Grid to pay large companies and hotels to 1) generate their own power or 2) turn down their refrigerators. Ordinary households it seems will have to pay for these freebies given away when the wind does not blow or the sun shine. 

Note 3: Average capacity efficiency of on-shore, combined with windy off-shore, turbines is around 25%. Midlands turbines operate at less than this and nowhere near the 32.9% figure claimed by McAlpine/RES, who are not independent as they say but a wholly owned subsidiary of the enormous McAlpine building group, who were accused by the BBC's Panorama of setting-up the illegal blacklist in the building trade. 

Note 4: The high price of UK and European electricity is because of wind and solar park ‘renewable’ subsidies and it is driving energy intensive manufacturing jobs overseas. See http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/25/business/international/basf-an-industrial-pillar-in-germany-leans-abroad.html?_r=1 Green energy destroys real jobs while creating a small number of subsidised jobs. In Rugby there are 1000 un-subsidised well-paid skilled engineering jobs in power generation and a handful only of highly subsidised wind jobs. Local interests are not supported by present wind and solar park subsidy policies 

Note 5: The Dept of Energy and Climate Change has had to admit recently that its prediction under Chris Huhne and Ed Davey, that gas prices would rise by 2020 and comparatively make wind and solar park renewable energy more competitive, is wrong. Their new prediction is a reduction in gas price of 20%. See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/11137332/Expensive-green-energy-a-bad-gamble-as-ministers-slash-gas-price-forecasts.html  and  http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2014/10/3/close-down-decc.html

One large gas power station like the one in Pembrokeshire creates about the same energy as all the UK wind turbines combined and takes up some 500 acres while the turbines cover 250,000 acres and Solar parks 130,000 acres! 

Note 6: A report commissioned by accountancy firm KPMG came to the conclusion that if the government dropped its wind turbine subsidy policy it would save the nation £34 Billion which means £550 saved for every person. NHS go weep! 

Note 7: Owen Paterson, formerly Secretary of State for the Environment, in a major seminal speech in October quoted from the EU paper ‘pathways to 2050’ that the cost of ‘UK decarbonising’ by 2050 was £1.3 Trillion, the equivalent of the total national debt. He called for the Climate Change Act, which requires Britain to be the only country in the world to legally hit ‘decarbonising’ targets, to be repealed. He recommended more sensible commonsense energy policies, like local CHP (Combined heat and power) that are not regressive in the way that renewable subsidies take money from ordinary citizens’ electricity bills and give it to the ‘green blob’ including rich land owners and renewable companies. See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2807849/EXPOSED-shadowy-network-funded-foreign-millions-making-household-energy-bills-soar-low-carbon-Britain.html   

Note 8:  Last week’s EU energy summit agreed to put to next year’s Paris Climate Change Conference the recommendation on targets to 2030  “A 27% renewable energy target that is binding at an aggregate European level but voluntary for individual member states.”  I.e. as the UK has already hit its renewable targets for 2020 and no more turbines need to be built, nor will there be a specific UK target to 2030 that require more expensive subsidised turbines. If as is almost certain the US, China or India refuse in Paris to agree binding targets then the EU will also drop its targets, otherwise Europe will become even more uncompetitive with its subsidy driven expensive energy, continuing what EU commissioner Mr Tajani has called “an industrial massacre”. See  http://www.euractiv.com/sections/eu-priorities-2020/eu-leaders-adopt-flexible-energy-and-climate-targets-2030-309462

 Note 9: Scientists accept that Global warming has stood still for the last 18 years while man-made CO2 has increased. The climate change alarmists’ computer models predicted continuing global warming during this period. This hiatus suggests there are huge questions about the theory of man-made global warming. See Matt Ridley: Whatever Happened To Global Warming? The Wall Street Journal, 5 September 2014

 Note 10:  Every political party is talking about making a fairer society. How can it be fair for already rich land owners and renewable energy companies to be paid twice the value of what they produce (gas is half the cost of onshore wind) and expect the whole community, including the poor and vulnerable, to subsidise them? 

Note 11: McAlpine/RES have tried before to use bribes to influence the debate and have been rejected. We have no reason to suppose a repeat of the bribes, though villagers are weary of the continuing threat to their community, will soften their resolve to fight these subsidy scavengers. In addition it would be financial suicide for house owners when a major 10 year study concludes turbines 1.2 miles away will slash the value of a £250,000 house by £27,000. See http://www.aswar.org.uk/content/lse-study-house-prices

85% against at Solar Park Community meeting

Local Conservative MP Mark Pawsey, and UKIP National Spokesman on Energy, Roger Helmer MEP, combined together in speaking in the defence of the small Churchover community, under siege for the third time in five years, now by a Solar Park.

The community meeting was also spoken to by the chairman of a national solar trade body but he was unable to swing the vote of 45 against, 7 in favour (including 4 financially involved with solar parks) and a handful of abstentions.

Lorne Smith, the ASWAR coordinator of the successful and well attended meeting in the beautiful Holy Trinity church (an oil leak in the village hall made it unavailable), said that “1) the solar park subsidy speculators should not to be trusted, listing a number of lies within their propaganda, and that 2) the two farmers, who attended the meeting, who have farmed and know the land better than anybody, say it is of high agricultural quality”.

He added that “with the government and some 85% of the local community against the blighting of good agricultural land that is a green lung between the encroaching Rugby and Lutterworth, with  an inefficient and costly industrial solar park, we are confidant the local planning committee will reject this proposal, if the speculators wish to waste more of their money and everybody’s time by submitting an application”. 

Click here to read ASWAR's initial objection to this solar park

The Government's Energy Minister has pledged recently that solar parks must not become the “new onshore windfarms” on greenfields and said he wanted solar panels installed on factory rooftops (and warehouses) instead. 

Also, in the first solar park appeal case since Eric Pickles’s tightening of government solar guidelines in March, Hive Energy’s proposal at Tattingstone, Suffolk was rejected. The Inspector Elizabeth Ord makes it clear that large-scale solar parks should focus on “previously developed and non-agricultural land”. 

To read a letter on "The catalogue of damage resulting from 'renewables' in Churchover" in the Leicester Mercury from John Philpott click here   

Support WASTE against Wolf wind turbines

The community around Wolvey came together on June 20th and voted overwhelmingly by 175 to 6 (97%) against a new gigantic wind turbine proposal between Wolvey and Monks Kirby.

Below is the WASTE Rally on the steps of the RugbyTown Hall on 3rd September 2014

Over 200 people sent in their objections to the building of a wind monitoring MetMast at Wolvey Wolf and over 50 people again lobbied a second planning meeting on September 24th but councillors on the advice of Nathan Lowde, the planning officer, accepted the application for three years on a majority vote. The argument was made that an Inspector on appeal would approve the Metmast even though it was in the GreenBelt and this would cost the Council money. 

Click here to visit the Wolvey Wolf page on this website and see a map where the turbines are proposed.

ASWAR is hosting this website page for WASTE to help publicise their campaign to defend another community 'around Rugby' from wind turbine speculators.

Click www.wastewolvey.com to visit a new website being developed by WASTE

Second defeat for Churchover wind turbines

ASWAR is delighted that its four year campaign on behalf of the local community has fought-off for the second time the ruination of one of Warwickshire’s most beautiful heritage and wildlife areas, (a conservation village and the setting of a listed 1000 year old church, as well as household and sporting amenity) and was supported (in Easter holiday week and in working hours) by a significant ‘Shires Anti-Wind Turbine Rally’ with residents from villages across Warwickshire, Leicestershire and Northamptonshire. (See the rotational photo above)

We thank the Rugby planning committee councillors, who discussed adding extra reasons for refusal and decided this was unecessary with the Officer stating there was no mitigation available to the NATS Aviation Safety objection, gave a unanimous vote to refuse, with two Lib Dem and one Labour councillor abstaining. 

Dr Chris Down, a Churchover resident said that “ASWAR believes local democracy was at stake with every local Parish Council, Lutterworth Town, Harborough District and Leicestershire County Councils, our MP, English Heritage, CPRE, ramblers, birders, riders, fishers and over 90% of residents objecting.” 

It has only now come to light that McAlpine/RES have known since 2012 that NATS (UK's air traffic control body) would object and their lawyers should have been aware that RBC would be legally required to refuse their application. ASWAR asks why have these speculative developers kept the local community under threat for two years? Has somebody been trying to cover-up their earlier mistake of buying the landowner contracts off SSE?

McAlpines should now do the decent thing and announce that they are immediately withdrawing and will not return, letting the community get on with its life in peace. 

Lorne Smith, ASWAR’s coordinator added that “McAlpine/RES have repeatedly propagandised their wind turbines in economic terms but people with commonsense, who may although like the concept of renewables, know that the primary purpose of wind turbines and solar farms is to generate money for land owners, overseas manufacturers and development speculators at the expense of the public and increased fuel poverty, at which they are very efficient. 

Their secondary purpose is to minutely generate intermittent electricity at which they are inefficient, unpredictable and uneconomic, requiring subsidies even after more than 25 years in development.”

ASWAR notes that as John Waine of Nuneaton in The Sunday Telegraph (letters 2/3/14) wrote: “Even if climate change is “man-made”, nothing that Britain does to reduce carbon emissions will make a jot of difference. Thus there is no justification for any of the green taxes which Labour imposed and which the present administration has maintained so steadfastly.”

Posted; Nov 2013              UNDER SIEGE AGAIN

The communities around Churchover and Cotesbach are under seige again.

For info to send a letter/email of objection before end Feb 2014 to Rugby Borough Council please CLICK HERE

To read ASWAR's initial (12 page) response to the new application CLICK HERE. 

To read Churchover Parish Council's (34 page) objection CLICK HERE.

The subsidy farming McAlpine/RES, the same massive group who the BBC’s Panorama accused of setting up the illegal blacklist in the building trade, have put in another application to build four wind turbines in the Warwickshire heritage and wildlife beauty spot of the Upper Swift Valley.

This new application, along with bribes for the NIMBYs, will not only receive the same degree of local rejection on the same grounds as the earlier proposal was unanimously rejected but with the encroachment of an intense windfarm landscape in the last two years, there are even more planning reasons now for rejection.

There is no rational energy or economic reason in favour of these wind turbines that steal some 15% of everybody’s bills and stuff the subsidies into the pockets of speculators and rent-seeking landowners - 10% (33% by 2020) in green taxes plus a proportion of the new infra-structure cost of linking turbines to the grid.  

How can it be right for companies to be paid twice to three times the going rate for electricity when they are damaging the environment and communities?

The alarmist propaganda in favour of wind turbines relies on the argument that they reduce the UK’s 2% of the world’s man-made CO2 emissions and thereby infinitesimally reduce global warming. 

But actually the intermittency of wind makes it necessary to have fossil-fuel back-up spinning the whole time for the National Grid to maintain an even voltage; (electricity cannot be stored) therefore wind turbines don’t even save CO2 anyway. (also the scientists say that GW has not increased since 1997 - seventeen years of stand-still).

It is surprising that anybody can support this energy policy that is making this nation globally uncompetitive, driving manufacturing jobs overseas and ordinary people into fuel poverty (a record number of people died from cold last winter), while attacking the asset values of innocent property owners and killing birds and bats (scientists say 900,000 bats are killed by wind turbines every year).

(America is receiving increased manufacturing investment because it has reduced its energy costs and CO2 emissions through its safe, clean, Shale Gas fracking policy).

Villagers under siege from SSE and now McAlpines, rally outside the windfarm propaganda exhibition in Churchover  

Mr Lorne Smith from ASWAR (Against Subsidised Windfarms Around Rugby) said:

The community around Churchover/Cotesbach turned out in force to show their dislike at being victims of the windfarm scam for a second time. With each windfarm job in the UK being subsidised by £100,000 from our electricity bills, and 10 McAlpine/RES staff supporting their propaganda exhibition, there was £1 million of our money walking around Churchover today!

Government Ministers and the local MP have promised that local communities need to give their consent before windfarms can be built, so ASWAR held a Community Meeting on Wednesday July 10th in Churchover Village Hall to discuss and vote on the new windfarm proposal. 

At the meeting, where there was a unanimous vote against the windfarm proposal, Lorne thanked Leigh Hunt and Philip Morris-Jones, their elected Borough and County Councillors for their support and the many from other local villages, as well as James Delingpole, fresh from his spirited performance on BBC’s Any Questions programme, who gave the meeting a preview of ‘the diabolically expensive’ way the government will attempt to keep the lights on when the wind does not blow, given in his Mail on Sunday article published July 14th.  

Dr Chris Down, the professional local planning consultant, noted that four out of five reasons used by the Rugby planning Committee to reject the SSE wind turbines apply to the new four turbine proposal, while the accumulation of other windfarms, that have recently appeared across the nearby landscape, further strengthen the reason for rejection. 

Lorne, speaking about the windfarm economic scam and its effect on increasing fuel poverty, recommended householders to discover how much tax they are paying in their utility bills, by using the simple calculator on the Tax Payers Alliance website www.energyswindle.org


The community has given ASWAR a strong democratic mandate

In summer 2010 a Scottish developer gave a week’s notice of an exhibition to announce their 15 turbine wind power station proposal. With half a day’s notice, the community of Churchover had reacted with a Mass Picket. See photo on the right.

The Parish Council, wanting a true test of the Parish’s opinion, organised a listening event for people to confidentially log their view.  Well over 90% were against.

A campaign launch meeting was held in the packed village hall at the end of September ( Click here to see the Press report ) when there was a unanimous vote to set up an Action Group to defend the community.

ASWAR at Rugby Town HallA second propaganda exhibition by the developer for a 9 turbine proposal was mass picketted in October with many people coming from nearby villagesclick here to read the Press report.

A Rally on the steps of Rugby town Hall was held on a cold january's evening to emphasise to Councillors that over 90% of the community expected them to reject the proposal. See photo on the left.

The developer's proposal was for 9 wind turbines each linked by a 6 metre concrete track across the valley behind Churchover.  At 126 metres tall, they will be 5 times the height of the village church.  The nearest will be about 700 metres from the officially designated village conservation area and some 430 metres from some houses.

It must be in everybody’s interest to resist these wind turbines

wind is free, windpower is not

  • Do you want your electricity prices increased by 50% ( some say much higher) to pay for windfarm ROC subsidies?  Read more…
  • Will your house value be reduced? Read more.. It is a good investment in time and money to help the fight
  • Do you want one of the Midland's iconic views of a conservation village with its 9th century historic church that presently dominates the meandering Swift Valley to be blighted and vandalised?
  • Are the health hazards of Turbine noise (audio and infra-sound) being brushed under the table?
  • If the Churchover windfarm goes ahead, it will be the first of many across the rural Rugby area and being in a beautiful area and so close to housing, no area will be protected in the future. Help stop a precedent being created.
  • A wind energy policy stands no chance of altering atmospheric CO2 concentrations, still less of deflecting climate change. Read more..
  • Protect your life – support ASWAR

“saving the environment” by building wind power stations that damage the environment, is NOT a good idea!