Tuesday, 3 June 2025
Legal challenge to massive windfarm proposal
On 1 June 2025 the Walshaw Turbines Research Group sent a letter before action to Christian Egal, Project Director of Calderdale Energy Park. The letter can be read on the Walshaw Turbines Research Group website here, along with extensive evidence.
Call for postponement of public consultation
The legal letter requires that the public consultation into CEP that began on 29 April 2025 and ends on 10 June 2025 be postponed.
Vagueness of proposals
Campaigner Nick MacKinnon said, 'Many people who have attended the public exhibitions at Hebden Bridge, Oxenhope and Trawden have been amazed and angered by the vagueness of the proposals, which the consultants themselves call "only the snapshot of a process", "a map showing where some of the turbines might be roughly", "merely indicative".
Errors
The maps that support the proposal have many errors. The hydrology map does not even show the correct flow of water out of Greave Clough, one of the areas where Calderdale Energy Park is most likely to cause a catastrophic flood. There is a turbine overhanging the Pennine Way and another inaccessible deep in Black Clough.
On the launch day Walshaw Turbines Research Group made Christian Egal correct all the maps, which he did on 1 May. Then Walshaw Turbines Research Group made him correct a map of peat depths again which he did on 2 May. Every copy of the printed Consultation Brochure had to have a correction sticker inserted by hand. CWF Ltd say these corrections were "typographic". They were in fact further evidence of chaos in the run-up to the sham "Public Consultation".
The Gunning Principles state how a public consultation must be conducted. The Walshaw Turbines Research Group lawyers say that the Calderdale Energy Park public consultation has failed abjectly to meet the required principles.
Useful links:
- Calderdale wind (developer): Calderdale Wind Farm - Calderdale Wind Farm
- Save snd Restore Walshaw Moor
- XR Community assembly manual: CommunityAssemblyManual.pdf - Google Drive
- FoE NSIP Briefing: NSIP Guide for Campaigners_final_1.pdf
Previously on the HebWeb
HebWeb News: Report: Walshaw Windfarm community assembly