Item8AACloicheWindFarm20200121PAC

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 8 25/09/2020

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

DEVEL­OP­MENT PRO­POSED: Cloi­che wind farm

Con­sulta­tion from Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Energy Con­sents & Deploy­ment Unit

REF­ER­ENCE: 2020/0121/PAC (ECU00002054)

APPLIC­ANT: SSE Gen­er­a­tion, Cloi­che wind farm

DATE CON­SUL­TED: 5 May 2020

RECOM­MEND­A­TION: Objection

CASE OFFICER: Nina Caudrey, Plan­ning Officer

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 8 25/09/2020

PUR­POSE OF REPORT

1. The pur­pose of this report is to inform the com­mit­tee decision and sub­sequent con­sulta­tion response to the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Energy Con­sents & Deploy­ment Unit (ECDU) on an applic­a­tion sub­mit­ted under Sec­tion 36 of the Elec­tri­city Act 1989 for a pro­posed wind farm loc­ated to the south west of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. The Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment are the determ­in­ing Author­ity for this applic­a­tion as the out­put is more than 50 MW. The applic­a­tion is accom­pan­ied by an Envir­on­ment­al Report (ER), which presents the find­ings of the applicant’s Envir­on­ment­al Impact Assess­ment (EIA).

2. The plan­ning issues to be con­sidered are con­fined to the effects of the pro­posed wind farm on the land­scape char­ac­ter and Spe­cial Land­scape Qual­it­ies (SLQs) of the Nation­al Park. All oth­er mat­ters, such as eco­logy, noise, gen­er­al amen­ity, etc, are assessed by the decision maker (Scot­tish Min­is­ters) with advice from stat­utory consultees.

3. Under the cur­rent work­ing agree­ment on roles in land­scape case­work between NatureScot (formerly Scot­tish Nat­ur­al Her­it­age, SNH) and the Park Author­ity, NatureScot lead on the pro­vi­sion of advice on the effects on the SLQs caused by pro­pos­als out­with the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. Their advice has been used to inform this report.

SITE DESCRIP­TION AND PRO­POSED DEVELOPMENT

1. The pro­posed wind farm is split into two clusters of tur­bines, adjoin­ing the west and east­ern ends of the exist­ing Stronelairg wind farm in the Mon­adh­liath moun­tains, as shown in the applicant’s ER Fig­ure 7.7.2 on page 2 of this report. As also shown in the fig­ure, in the sur­round­ing area there are numer­ous exist­ing and con­sen­ted wind farms, plus a pro­posed wind farm in the plan­ning system.

2. The pro­posed devel­op­ment would com­prise 36 tur­bines with a max­im­um height of 149.9m to the tip of the blade in an upright pos­i­tion (with 8 tur­bines in the east­ern cluster and 28 in the west­ern cluster), approx­im­ately 29km of upgraded exist­ing track plus 26km of new track, as well as oth­er infra­struc­ture and works (such as sub­sta­tion, under­ground cabling, bor­row pits, etc). It is expec­ted that the wind farm would have an estim­ated total installed capa­city of around 150MW, depend­ent on the tur­bine spe­cific­a­tion used.

3. The nearest tur­bine of the east­ern cluster would be around 1.4 km to the north of the closest part of the bound­ary of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park, with the west­ern cluster, tracks and asso­ci­ated infra­struc­ture loc­ated fur­ther from the Park boundary.

4. The­or­et­ic­al vis­ib­il­ity of the pro­posed wind farm from with­in the Park would largely be focussed between 5 and 25 km from the wind farm around the south west­ern corner of the Park, with some vis­ib­il­ity at great­er dis­tances fur­ther into the Park, as shown by the col­oured areas in Fig­ure 7.5.1 of the applicant’s ER (Appendix I).

5. When con­sid­er­ing the cumu­lat­ive visu­al effects with the baseline of exist­ing and con­sen­ted wind farms in the sur­round­ing area, the pro­posed wind farm adds to effects

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 8 25/09/2020

caused by the baseline devel­op­ments by intensi­fy­ing the baseline level of devel­op­ment exper­i­enced, as well as cre­at­ing new vis­ib­il­ity of a wind farm in areas that do not or would not already see exist­ing and con­sen­ted wind farms. The new vis­ib­il­ity is largely focussed around the south west­ern corner of the Park, as shown by the blue areas in fig­ure 7.8.3 of the applicant’s ER (Appendix II).

1. Visu­al­isa­tions from a num­ber of view­points (VPs) have been provided in the applicant’s ER that demon­strate the level of vis­ib­il­ity that would be had (fig­ure 7.5.1, Appendix I), includ­ing from with­in and close to the Park bound­ary. These include those lis­ted in the table below, which can be found (along with oth­er ER mater­i­al) on the ECDU web­site via https://www.energyconsents.scot/ApplicationDetails.aspx?cr=ECU00002054 and look­ing under the ​‘applic­a­tion doc­u­ments’ for doc­u­ments with a descrip­tion start­ing ​‘Volume 3A – Fig­ure 7.XXX’ where XXX is the visu­al­isa­tion title (eg ​‘Volume 3A — 7.9.9.1 — View­point from Geal Carn (Mon­adh­liath)’).

VP num­ber and loc­a­tion	With­in the Park?	Closest vis­ible tur­bine to VP	ER visu­al­isa­tion titles
VP9, Geal Charn (Mon­adh­liath)	on bound­ary	2.7 km	7.9.9.1 ‑2 View­point from Geal Carn (Mon­adh­liath)
VP8, Carn Dearg (Mon­adh­liath)	yes	6.2 km	7.9.8.1 — 3, View­point from Carn Dearg (Mon­adh­liath)
VP18, Loch na Lairige	yes	11.1 km	7.9.18.1 – 3 View­point from VP18 Loch na Lairige
VP12, Glen Shirra	yes	11.2 km	7.9.12.1 – 3 View­point from VP12 Glen Shirra
VP19, Cam na Caim	yes	22.7 km	7.9.19.1 – 3 View­point from VP19 Carn na Caim
VP10, Braeriach	yes	38.1 km	fig­ures 7.9.10.1 – 7.9.10.3 View­point from VP10 Braeriach
VPII, Cam Liath	approx­im­ately 2.5 km outwith	10.3 km	7.9.11.1 – 3 View­point from VPII Carn Liath
VP6, Glen Markie	approx­im­ately 6 km outwith	7.4 km	7.9.6.1 – 3 View­point from Glen Markie
VP5, Carn Dubh	approx­im­ately 10 km outwith	5.5 km	7.9.5.1.1 – 3 View­point from Carn Dubh

REL­EV­ANT PLAN­NING HISTORY

1. PRE/2019/0019 CNPA respon­ded to a scop­ing con­sulta­tion from ECDU for a dif­fer­ent num­ber and size of tur­bines in the same loc­a­tion (up to 40 wind tur­bines of height 175 metres to tip) on 25 Octo­ber 2018. This deferred to the advice of NatureScot, but high­lighted the sens­it­iv­ity of the loc­a­tion and the need for care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion of cumu­lat­ive effects.

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 8 25/09/2020

1. CNPA atten­ded a pre-applic­a­tion meet­ing with High­land Coun­cil, the applic­ant and stat­utory con­sul­tees on 27 Novem­ber 2019, where verbal advice was giv­en to the applic­ant. Writ­ten advice was pro­duced by High­land Coun­cil in Decem­ber 2019 after the meeting.

PLAN­NING POLICY CONTEXT

1. The devel­op­ment pro­pos­al is loc­ated wholly out­with the Nation­al Park, there­fore the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan (2015) policies do not apply. How­ever, an assess­ment of the pro­pos­al must have regard to Scot­tish Plan­ning Policy (SPP) and the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP).

Nation­al Policy

1. Scot­tish Plan­ning Policy (revised 2014) sets out nation­al plan­ning policies that reflect Scot­tish Min­is­ters pri­or­it­ies for the devel­op­ment and use of land, as well as for oper­a­tion of the plan­ning sys­tem. The con­tent of SPP is a mater­i­al con­sid­er­a­tion in plan­ning decisions that car­ries sig­ni­fic­ant weight.

2. Policy relat­ing spe­cific­ally to Nation­al Parks and devel­op­ment man­age­ment can be found in para­graphs 84 and 85 of SPP. These re-state the four aims of the Nation­al Parks as set out in the Nation­al Parks (Scot­land) Act 2000, as well as the need to pur­sue these col­lect­ively. SPP high­lights that if there is a con­flict between the first aim (con­serving and enhan­cing the nat­ur­al and cul­tur­al her­it­age of the area) and any of the oth­ers, then great­er weight must be giv­en to the first aim. Plan­ning decisions are expec­ted to reflect this weight­ing and be con­sist­ent with the four aims.

3. Para­graph 85 of SPP also cla­ri­fies that the aims and require­ments of para­graphs 84 and 85 apply to devel­op­ment out­with a Nation­al Park that affects the Park.

4. Para­graph 212 of SPP states that ​“where devel­op­ment affects a Nation­al Park… it should only be per­mit­ted where:

   • the object­ives of the des­ig­na­tion and the over­all integ­rity of the area will not be com­prom­ised; or
   • any sig­ni­fic­ant adverse impacts on the qual­it­ies for which the area has been des­ig­nated are clearly out­weighed by social, envir­on­ment­al or eco­nom­ic bene­fits of nation­al importance”.

Stra­tegic Policy

1. The Cairngorms Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan (NPPP) 2017 – 2022 is required under sec­tion II of the Nation­al Parks (Scot­land) Act 2000. It is the man­age­ment plan for the Cairngorms Nation­al Park approved by Scot­tish Min­is­ters. The NPPP sets out how all those with a respons­ib­il­ity for the Park will coordin­ate their work to tackle the most import­ant issues. There is a duty for decision makers to have regard to the NPPP, a require­ment set out in Sec­tion 14 of the Act. As such, the NPPP is a mater­i­al con­sid­er­a­tion in plan­ning decisions.

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 8 25/09/2020

1. The NPPP iden­ti­fies that the land­scapes of the Nation­al Park are val­ued by many and under­pin the area’s eco­nomy. It con­tains policies to safe­guard land­scape interests. Of rel­ev­ance to wind farm devel­op­ment pro­pos­als are policies 1.3 and 3.3.

2. Policy 1.3 seeks to con­serve and enhance the SLQs.

3. Policy 3.3 seeks to sup­port devel­op­ment of a low car­bon eco­nomy and increase renew­able energy gen­er­a­tion where this is com­pat­ible with con­serving the SLQs. In rela­tion to wind farm devel­op­ment, the policy states that ​“large scale wind tur­bines are not com­pat­ible with the land­scape char­ac­ter or spe­cial qual­it­ies of the Nation­al Park. They are inap­pro­pri­ate with­in the Nation­al Park, or where out­side the Park they sig­ni­fic­antly adversely affect its land­scape char­ac­ter or spe­cial land­scape qualities”.

CON­SULTA­TIONS

Nature Scot advice

1. NatureScot have provided CNPA with advice in rela­tion to the effects on a range of land­scape interests, includ­ing the Park, of the pro­posed wind farm both alone and cumu­lat­ively with oth­er exist­ing and con­sen­ted wind farms in the sur­round­ing area.

Effects on the SLQs

1. Fol­low­ing the meth­od for assess­ment of effects on SLQs, NatureScot have focused their ana­lys­is on the SLQs that they con­sider that the pro­posed devel­op­ment is likely to have sig­ni­fic­ant adverse effects. Some of the SLQs have been grouped where they share many of the same under­pin­ning land­scape char­ac­ter­ist­ics. The group­ings of SLQs (in ital­ics) are those that NatureScot con­sider are most rel­ev­ant and sens­it­ive to likely sig­ni­fic­ant effects from the proposal.

2. Strong jux­ta­pos­i­tion of con­trast­ing land­scapes & Grand pan­or­a­mas and framed views There is a strong jux­ta­pos­i­tion between the settled and man­aged land­scapes along the lower glens of Glen Shirra, Glen Mash­ie and the Upper Spey, and the high­er ground uplands of the South Mon­adh­liaths where nat­ur­al pro­cesses dom­in­ate in this rel­at­ively small intim­ate part of the Park. The upland hills cre­ate a simple back­cloth that emphas­ises the land­scape pat­tern with­in the straths as well as their spa­tial con­tain­ment and sense of place, seem­ing high, massive and extens­ive in scale.

3. The intro­duc­tion of the pro­posed wind tur­bines in an exposed upland land­scape set­ting (such as viewed from rep­res­ent­at­ive view­point 18, Loch na Lairige, and from the hill fort of Dùn-da-Lamh) will con­trast with the exist­ing char­ac­ter where human ele­ments tend to be con­tained with­in the strath floors and lower slopes. Cur­rently the land­scape seems undeveloped, simple and there is a rel­at­ively untouched hori­zont­al emphas­is, where­as the pro­pos­al will indic­ate the pres­ence of incon­gru­ous human-made ver­tic­al struc­tures both in front of and over the hori­zon. By being seen as large, rotat­ing struc­tures on the upland hill sky­line, the lar­ger 28 tur­bine west­ern array of the pro­pos­al would appear to encroach into the glen land­scape of the Upper Spey and breach the exist­ing hill edge. The pro­pos­al would have some sig­ni­fic­ant adverse effects on these SLQs in addi­tion to the effects of the exist­ing Stronelairg wind farm, which forms

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 8 25/09/2020

part of the baseline con­di­tions, because it would typ­ic­ally appear much more prom­in­ent and impos­ing upon the sur­round­ing straths.

1. Land­scape of lay­ers & Lay­ers of reced­ing ridge lines & Vast­ness of space, scale and height. In the elev­ated and open land­scapes of the Park, includ­ing the South Mon­adh­liath (from approx­im­ately 5km from the pro­pos­al), Upper Glen Tru­im, Dal­whin­nie and the Cairngorm Mas­sif (between 8km and 20km from the pro­pos­al), the sense of expans­ive­ness, open­ness and space cre­ated by the lay­er upon lay­er of reced­ing ridgelines is well expressed in all dir­ec­tions. In these loc­a­tions, land­form hori­zons form a key visu­al ele­ment, the con­vex­ity of the rolling slopes often screen­ing the straths and glens that divide neigh­bour­ing hill ranges so the land­scape seems even more expans­ive than its phys­ic­al dimen­sions may suggest.

2. With­in the South Mon­adh­liath, the pro­posed tur­bines would typ­ic­ally be seen in addi­tion to the exist­ing Stronelairg tur­bines. Non­ethe­less, they will appear to have great­er effects on people’s exper­i­ence of the SLQs from the Mon­adh­liath plat­eau and tops due to their great­er prox­im­ity and per­ceived impos­i­tion, partly due to appear­ing to breach the shal­low bowl that con­tains much of the Stronelairg devel­op­ment (mit­ig­a­tion was put in place as part of the Stronelairg applic­a­tion to secure this containment).

3. The spread of the pro­posed wind tur­bines will appear very extens­ive with­in the land­scape. From loc­a­tions with­in the Mon­adh­liath hills, des­pite the exist­ing Stronelairg wind tur­bines hav­ing adverse effects, these tur­bines appear sep­ar­ate from view­ers by a vis­ible extent of open space in-between as well as appear­ing less prom­in­ent due to their lower elev­a­tion. In con­trast, the pro­posed Cloi­che wind tur­bines (in par­tic­u­lar the east­ern array) would be so close and high in rela­tion to some parts of the Mon­adh­liath plat­eau that they would appear imme­di­ately behind the fore­ground land­form hori­zon. This would res­ult in the pro­pos­al dimin­ish­ing the per­ceived vast­ness of space and scale, and con­trast­ing to the strong hori­zont­al emphas­is which is a key ele­ment of this part of the Park (rep­res­ent­at­ive view­points 9 Geal Charn and 8 Carn Dearg) how­ever these effects are not con­sidered to be sig­ni­fic­ant due to the exist­ing prom­in­ence of the Stronelairg tur­bines and the effects on these qualities.

4. The pro­posed wind tur­bines will intro­duce a fea­ture in dis­tant views from the upper reaches of Glen Tru­im, the South­ern Hills and the Cairngorm Mas­sif (rep­res­en­ted by view­points 10 and 19) which seems to inter­rupt the suc­cess­ive land­form hori­zons and per­ceived vast­ness of space and scale that con­trib­ute to this SLQ. These effects would, how­ever, be unlikely to be sig­ni­fic­ant, prin­cip­ally due to the dis­tance of the pro­pos­al and effects of exist­ing wind farms, includ­ing Stronelairg, Mil­len­ni­um, Cor­rie­garth, and Dunmaglass.

5. Dom­in­ance of nat­ur­al land­forms & Wild­ness. The dom­in­ance of nature at the broad scale along with the not­able lack of obvi­ous devel­op­ment is well expressed across the Upper Glen Tru­im and Dal­whin­nie and to a less­er extent South Mon­adh­liaths area. At present any not­able human activ­ity is typ­ic­ally with­in the glen floors and lower slopes, with the sur­round­ing uplands pre­dom­in­ately unin­hab­ited, nat­ur­al in form, extens­ively covered by moor­land veget­a­tion, with a sense of wildness.

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 8 25/09/2020

1. Where Stronelairg is vis­ible, Cloi­che would appear as a not­able exten­sion much closer to the cur­rently remote South Mon­adh­liath hills and, as such, increase the prom­in­ence, extent and influ­ence of human struc­tures whilst sim­ul­tan­eously dimin­ish­ing the dom­in­ance of nat­ur­al land­forms and per­ceived wild­ness. Unlike Stronelairg, there is no appar­ent phys­ic­al con­tain­ment to Cloi­che there­fore it appears to ​‘spill over’ into the wider, wilder land­scape. From Upper Glen Tru­im and Dal­whin­nie where Stronelairg tends to be less vis­ible due to its con­tain­ment, Cloi­che will add to the more dis­tant wind farms which already inter­rupt and com­pete with the dom­in­ance of nat­ur­al land­forms. The pro­pos­al would have sig­ni­fic­ant adverse effects on these SLQs in addi­tion to the effects of the exist­ing Stronelairg wind farm giv­en the high sens­it­iv­ity and people’s exper­i­ence of the SLQs and land­scape char­ac­ter in this open landscape.

Cumu­lat­ive effects

1. NatureScot provided advice in rela­tion to the effects of Cloi­che in com­bin­a­tion with exist­ing and con­sen­ted wind farms. Their advice is that exist­ing and con­sen­ted wind farms across the Mon­adh­liaths have sig­ni­fic­antly affected nation­ally import­ant land­scapes includ­ing the Park, intensi­fy­ing the exist­ing developed char­ac­ter of this part of the Rolling Uplands of the Mon­adh­liaths. In rela­tion to the Park, Cloi­che would sig­ni­fic­antly add to these effects for the reas­ons described above. It is on this basis that the apprais­al and recom­mend­a­tion in this report is made.

2. How­ever, as an adjoin­ing devel­op­ment, the pro­posed Glen­shero wind farm, is cur­rently in the plan­ning sys­tem at appeal, addi­tion­al con­sid­er­a­tion was giv­en by CNPA officers as to wheth­er the cumu­lat­ive effects would alter should Glen­shero gain consent.

3. Com­par­is­on of the cumu­lat­ive ZTV for Cloi­che, exist­ing and con­sen­ted wind farms (Appendix II) with the cumu­lat­ive ZTV for Cloi­che, exist­ing and con­sen­ted wind farms plus Glen­shero (Appendix III) shows the coin­cid­ence of vis­ib­il­ity between Glen­shero and the pro­posed Cloi­che wind farm. Where the vis­ib­il­ity coin­cides, the blue areas with only vis­ib­il­ity of Cloi­che in Appendix II turn green in Appendix III indic­at­ing vis­ib­il­ity of both Cloi­che and Glen­shero. The visu­al­isa­tions pro­duced by the applic­ant also aide con­sid­er­a­tion, par­tic­u­larly the wire­lines that dis­tin­guish between the dif­fer­ent wind farm developments.

4. It is con­sidered that the cumu­lat­ive effects would change should Glen­shero gain con­sent: the addi­tion of Glen­shero to the baseline of exist­ing and con­sen­ted wind farms would sig­ni­fic­antly dimin­ish the sig­ni­fic­ance of the effects of Cloi­che on the Park. This is due the mag­nitude and spread of the effects of Glen­shero as described in com­mit­tee report Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 9 24/05/2019 (avail­able via https://​cairngorms​.co​.uk/​r​e​s​o​u​r​c​e​/​d​o​c​s​/​b​o​a​r​d​p​a​p​e​r​s​/​2​4​0​5​2​0​1​9​/​I​t​e​m​9​A​A​G​l​e​n​s​h​e​r​o​W​i​n​d​f​a​r​m​2​0​1​8​0​3​7​9​P​A​C.pdf), which would be great­er than those pre­dicted for Cloi­che. As there is sig­ni­fic­ant over­lap in the areas that would be affected by Cloi­che and Glen­shero, should Glen­shero gain con­sent and become part of the baseline, then the addi­tion of Cloi­che would not sig­ni­fic­antly add to the level of effects that would be caused by Glen­shero, exist­ing and con­sen­ted wind farms.

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 8 25/09/2020

APPRAIS­AL

1. The policies of the NPPP and SPP set out how pro­pos­als out­with the bound­ar­ies of the Nation­al Park should be con­sidered in terms of effects on the Park.

2. Policy 3.3 of the NPPP sets out a test for con­sid­er­ing effects on the Park, in that large scale wind tur­bines are inap­pro­pri­ate out­side the Park where they ​‘sig­ni­fic­antly adversely affect its land­scape char­ac­ter or spe­cial land­scape qual­it­ies’. If a pro­pos­al fails policy 3.3, it would also be in con­flict with policy 1.3, which seeks to con­serve and enhance the SLQs.

3. Para­graph 212 of SPP sets out that ​“devel­op­ment that affects a Nation­al Park… should only be per­mit­ted where:

   • the object­ives of des­ig­na­tion and the over­all integ­rity of the area will not be com­prom­ised; or
   • any sig­ni­fic­ant adverse effects on the qual­it­ies for which the area has been des­ig­nated are clearly out­weighed by social, envir­on­ment­al or eco­nom­ic bene­fits of nation­al importance.”

4. In the policy con­text of the NPPP and SPP, con­sid­er­a­tion is required of the effects of the pro­posed devel­op­ment, on land­scape char­ac­ter and the SLQs, both alone and cumu­lat­ively with oth­er wind farms in the sur­round­ing area.

5. There are a num­ber of exist­ing and con­sen­ted wind farms in the area sur­round­ing the pro­posed wind farm, as shown on page 2 of this report. There is also a nearby wind farm in the plan­ning sys­tem that has not yet been determ­ined, Glen­shero wind farm (also shown on page 2).

6. In rela­tion to effects on the SLQs of the Park, Nature Scot con­clude that the pro­posed Cloi­che wind farm would encroach sig­ni­fic­antly on some of the land­scape char­ac­ter, SLQs and people’s exper­i­ence of these, prin­cip­ally due to its sit­ing and extent that would breach the shal­low bowl that con­tains much of the Stronelairg devel­op­ment, undo­ing the mit­ig­a­tion that was put in place as part of the Stronelairg applic­a­tion to secure this con­tain­ment. It would dimin­ish exist­ing qual­it­ies of: Strong jux­ta­pos­i­tion of con­trast­ing land­scapes, Grand pan­or­a­mas and framed views, land­scape of lay­ers, Dom­in­ance of nat­ur­al land­forms & Wild­ness. The pro­pos­al would have sig­ni­fic­ant adverse effects in addi­tion to the exist­ing Stronelairg wind farm that forms part of the baseline con­di­tions, par­tic­u­larly because it would appear from many sens­it­ive areas to sig­ni­fic­antly add to the extent and prox­im­ity of the Stronelairg wind farm and per­ceived encroachment.

7. When con­sidered against the baseline of exist­ing and con­sen­ted wind farms, the addi­tion of Cloi­che would have sig­ni­fic­ant adverse effects on the sev­er­al SLQs and land­scape char­ac­ter of the Park, adding to the exist­ing level of effects in some areas and intro­du­cing new effects in others.

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 8 25/09/2020

1. The extent and level of sig­ni­fic­ant adverse effects caused by the addi­tion of Cloi­che to the baseline of exist­ing and con­sen­ted wind farms is there­fore con­sidered to fail to meet the require­ments of NPPP policy 3.3 (and so 1.3). As a res­ult, CNPA should object to the pro­posed Cloi­che wind farm in com­bin­a­tion with exist­ing and con­sen­ted wind farms.

RECOM­MEND­A­TION

That Mem­bers of the Com­mit­tee sup­port a recom­mend­a­tion that CNPA OBJECTS to the pro­posed Cloi­che wind farm in com­bin­a­tion with con­sen­ted and exist­ing wind farms, due to sig­ni­fic­ant adverse effects on some of the Spe­cial Land­scape Qual­it­ies and land­scape char­ac­ter of the Park caus­ing it to fail to meet the require­ments of Policy 3.3 (and so policy 1.3) of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan 2017 – 2022.