Wednesday, 4 March 2026
Walshaw Windfarm: Planning Department challenge developer's 'misleading statements'
Calderdale Planning Authority challenges windfarm developer's "misleading statements" and inadequate statutory consultation plans
Calderdale Council Planning Department has called for big changes to statutory community consultation plans for the contentious Walshaw Moor windfarm proposal.
The Critical National Priority project is currently in its third version. The latest scaled-down revision was made in response to highly critical feedback from the Planning Inspectorate last October.
Mere Stones - photo: Creative commons, Mark Anderson
The scheme's "proposed investment into Calderdale" has reduced from £500m to £274m. The proposal, sited on the most highly environmentally-protected blanket bog peatland in England, now has:
- 80% of the initial installed capacity and 7 fewer turbines.
- No Battery Energy Storage System,
- Five borrow pits (to quarry low grade aggregate for access tracks and infrastructure foundations and re-fill with peat excavated for infrastructure construction)
- A proposed cable connection to the Northern Power distribution network at Bradford West substation.
The developers admitted to Councillors at a meeting on 2nd February that the need to revise the project has put it months behind schedule.
Now Calderdale Council - which has a big role in the Calderdale Energy Park pre-application planning process - has asked the developer to postpone the start of the statutory consultation until after the local elections on 7 May 2026.
This would avoid the sensitive Pre-Election Period and ensure that newly elected Councillors and new council administrations are properly consulted.
The Council has also asked for the statutory community consultation to be extended from six to twelve weeks because of the volume and complexity of new technical information about the revised version of the windfarm:
"Local parish and town councils and groups rely heavily on volunteers working in their spare time to respond to the windfarm's consultations and reports. Sufficient time is therefore required for them to review complex and technical planning documents…"
Photo from Peatland Alliance - Notice heading:
"This land is potentially affected by this project"
Calderdale Council has told Calderdale Energy Park that before the consultation begins, they should provide complete preliminary environmental information, that comprehensively addresses the matters raised in the Planning Inspector's Scoping Opinion last October. The applicant should also publish all environmental baseline surveys.
One such volunteer, Penny Price who represents Upper Calderdale Wildlife Network in the Peatland Alliance, said, "A huge volume of documents - which so far have come with significant errors and omissions about key environmental data - have to be read through and analysed to make a meaningful response to an application of this size. This makes a 6 week consultation barely achievable for volunteers, many of whom are doing this outside working hours. So restricting the consultation period to 6 weeks feels like a cynical move by the applicant to minimise consultation."
Stuart Bradshaw, a recently retired engineer who has worked on peatland windfarm developments in Scotland, added, "As a volunteer commenting on the logistical aspects of constructing this wind farm and given the moving target so far - 65 to 43 and now up to 34 turbines, keeping abreast of these changes and any others that may occur within a 6 week consultation period seems unfair particularly with the limited resources in terms of time and data available to me and other volunteers who make serious efforts to comment responsibly on the changing Calderdale Energy Park proposals."
As well as requesting big changes to the statutory community consultation plans, Calderdale Council has also taken the developer to task for "materially misleading" statements on negotiations about the funding that Calderdale Energy Park is required to provide through a Planning Performance Arrangement.
The finance is to enable Calderdale Planning Authority to pay for the staff and resources it needs to carry out its many pre-application responsibilities relating to the Calderdale Energy Park project.
Despite months of negotiation, no agreement has been reached. As a result, Calderdale Council says it is unable to resource the monthly meetings Calderdale Energy Park has announced - creating a "misleading impression" of the extent to which Calderdale Energy Park is engaging positively with the Council.
Wadsworth Parish Council Chair Jon Kimber says he too has experienced a lack of positive engagement from the Calderdale Energy Park team,
"I wrote to Christian Egal of Calderdale Energy Park on February 17th on behalf of Wadsworth Parish Council requesting that Calderdale Energy Park both delay the statutory consultation period until after the local elections in May and to extend the length of that period. As yet I have not yet had a response"
Calderdale Energy Park consultants told Councillors in a meeting chaired by Cllr Jon Kimber on 2nd February, that they would be reluctant to grant these requests if Calderdale Council were to make them. They aim to submit a Development Consent Order application to the Planning Inspectorate in November this year, and don't want to put this at risk.
But the Planning Inspectorate raised questions about this schedule, in a project update meeting with Calderdale Energy Park on 26th January 2026. It advised the developer of the need to ensure that all stakeholders have sufficient opportunity to comment on the Development Consent Order application, if the submission date is pushed back to avoid submitting close to Christmas.
The project team brushed off the Inspectorate's query about when it would submit the draft Development Consent Order documents for advice. It claimed its experienced team are familiar with the Development Consent Order process and therefore unlikely to produce draft documents prior to submission. The Inspectorate had to remind them that it is a long time since an Onshore Windfarm project had last been submitted.
"The clear implication is that the team can't really be familiar with the process," a Peatland Alliance campaigner commented.
With thanks to the Peatland Alliance for this update
Useful links:
- Stop Calderdale Energy Park:
- Latest proposals for Calderdale Energy Park
- Peatland Alliance response to revised Calderdale Energy Park proposal
- Walshaw Turbines Research Group
- Save and Restore Walshaw Moor
- Calderdale wind developer: Calderdale Energy Park
- Guardian: What do Saudi developers know of Heathcliff? Brontë country up in arms over windfarm plan (Jan 2024)
On the HebWeb
Discussion on the HebWeb Forum
Walshaw Windfarm proposals scaled back - Turbines cut to 34
HebWeb News: Windfarm survey results: 90% against (Dec 2025)
HebWeb News: Calder Valley MP has "lost his way" on how to protect Walshaw Moor (Nov 2025)
HebWeb Forum: Windfarms on protected peatland
HebWeb Forum: Calderdale Wind Farm (May- June 2025)
HebWeb News: Legal challenge to massive windfarm proposal (June 25)
HebWeb News: Report: Walshaw Windfarm community assembly
HebWeb Forum: Large Windfarm proposal (Oct 24 - Feb 25)