Full council to meet again to determine planning application

A MEETING of the full Shetland Islands Council will take place next week to rubber-stamp a planning decision.

Councillors will be asked at Thursday’s meeting to approve granting planning permission for an electricity grid supply point at Gremista in Lerwick.

The application has already received the thumbs up from the council’s planning committee.

A full council meeting took place last month in what was the last scheduled session before May’s election, with convener Malcolm Bell and leader Steven Coutts effectively saying their goodbyes before they stand down.

The council is now in the usual pre-election period, in which restrictions are placed on the activity and communication of certain public bodies and officials.

Also on the agenda at Thursday’s meeting is a ‘governance update’, but the item’s details are not yet public.

Meanwhile the grid supply point involved in the planning application will connect the local power set-up to the new transmission network in the isles when Shetland is linked to the national grid.

Shetland will connect to the grid via a 600MW interconnector cable once the Viking Energy wind farm goes live in 2024.