Energy / SIC refuses request to stop planning monitoring of Viking site
SHETLAND Islands Council has refused a request from SSE to stop planning monitoring visits to the Viking Energy wind farm.
The energy giant had suggested, through engineering consultancy Ramboll, that the audit visits were no longer required with its wind farm having been in operation for over a year.
But the council’s development department insisted this month that there are still issues to be resolved at the site before they can give the final sign-off.
It is the second time that SSE has requested the planning monitoring visits to the Viking site be stopped, with the council also refusing the request in July 2024.
The purpose of the audits – which were carried out monthly during the construction of the 103-turbine wind farm in Shetland’s central mainland – was to monitor the environmental management of the project.
This was carried out through site visits and desk-based reviews, with the results then published through the council’s planning portal.
After SSE’s request last year, the SIC agreed to move instead to quarterly planning monitoring audits.
And though it has refused to stop the audits all together, it has said it will now only carry out reports every six months for the next year.
Development team leader John Holden said, however, that he did not feel comfortable stopping the reports just yet.
He said that the last audit report – published in September – showed there were still several issues that needed to be monitored at the Viking site.
These included works to deliver complete reinstatement of the main compound, the Sandwater road car park remaining uncompleted and the development of the north compound as a recreational car park still being unfinished.
Holden also said drainage treatment at the troublesome KBP02 borrow pit – which leached trace metals into the Burn of Lunklet – “remains temporary”.
“Pilot trials were in the process of being installed at the time of the visit conducted on 3 September, based on a design agreed with subject matter experts and SEPA to improve the water quality coming from the borrow pit,” he said.
He added that these trials would need to be assessed, and a refinement of the design carried out before it could be installed.
Finally, Holden said an assessment of the success of tree planting at a South Nesting site which was earmarked for seven hectares of woodland would need to be carried out in spring 2026.
Ramboll, on behalf of SSE, had previously asked for the council’s planning monitoring reports to stop in September 2024 when the wind farm went live.
In its submission, the company said the site would remain subject to environmental monitoring through the environmental clerk of works along with Shetland Windfarm Environmental Advisory Group (SWEAG).
It said the monitoring of the Burn of Lunklet and Weisdale, which were adversely affected by run-offs from the construction site, could be done instead by Water Ecology in its water quality monitoring reports.
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