Questionable at best

The SIC’s ‘Renewable Energy Development in Shetland: Strategy and Action Plan’ (18 August 2009) states: “the development of renewable energy in Shetland should be undertaken with community support and with due consideration to the protection of our environment.”

Regarding Viking Energy, whether the first intent has been fulfilled seems questionable at best.

Regarding ‘protection of the environment’, many officials from different organisations and many private individuals spent a long time examining VE’s amended plans. Because it found sufficient flaws in these plans, SIC planning department recommended planning permission be refused, and other organisations (and certainly not just Sustainable Shetland) formally objected.

SIC members could then have triggered a public inquiry at which these objections and concerns would have been formally presented and debated in the open, but instead they allowed the final decision to be taken in Edinburgh, behind closed doors. For months, various objectors (including the RSPB) anticipated that a public inquiry would be announced, but this was not to be. Perhaps if such an inquiry had taken place in Lerwick, free of any political or financial agenda, we might not be seeing the current rather vitriolic exchanges in the local media.

Martin Heubeck

Mansefield, Dunrossness