12:00pm Tuesday 21st June 2005
OBJECTORS to a wind farm have won a temporary reprieve after Your Energy failed to lodge a planning appeal in time.
The Planning Inspectorate has dismissed an application to appeal against North Dorset District Council's decision to reject an application for nine wind turbines in the Lower Winterborne Valley between Winterborne Kingston and Winterborne Zelston.
The inspectorate decided the applicant had failed to send its grounds of appeal to the council within six months.
And though there is no stopping Your Energy from launching a new planning application for the same development, the Dorset Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) and Dorset Against Rural Turbines (DART) are delighted with the stay of execution.
A spokesperson for both organis-ations said: "This news will remove from hundreds of local inhabitants the threat that has been hanging over them for the last two years and enable them to get on with their lives.
"Both CPRE and DART support the use of the many other renewable energy sources available and hope that the government will give more attention to bringing on stream these other sources rather than land based wind power.
"Dorset lowland is a unique landscape too precious to lose to large scale industrial development."
Earlier this year it was revealed that the cost to NDDC of defending at appeal its decision to refuse the planning application could have stretched to more than £76,000 - and it would have fallen to the local council taxpayer.
The application was for nine giant wind turbines larger than the Salisbury Cathedral spire.
First published: June 21
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