Fresh scrutiny needed?
One of the increasingly important questions arising from the Beaw Field project is how long a consent can continue to be treated as essentially the same project when the surrounding infrastructure assumptions have changed so substantially over time.
The wind farm was originally approved in 2017 with a five-year commencement period expiring in November 2022.
In 2022 Scottish ministers extended the Section 36 implementation period to November 2024, while also stating that the original deemed planning permission itself could not simply be extended under the existing consent framework.
This was followed in 2023 by a Section 36C variation and a fresh deemed planning permission running to November 2024, and then by a further Section 42 planning permission in 2024 extending the commencement date again to November 2026.
Statkraft is now reportedly seeking a further extension to November 2031 because of uncertainty surrounding the wider transmission infrastructure and grid connection arrangements, including the proposed “Shetland 2” interconnector.
Legally, however, the wind farm and the associated substations and transmission infrastructure are being treated as separate projects, even though in practical and operational terms they are functionally interdependent and cannot realistically operate independently of one another.
That raises an important policy and planning question: if implementation deadlines can repeatedly be extended because the necessary infrastructure is delayed by entirely separate projects and regulatory processes, what is the real purpose of the original commencement deadline and at what point does the consent cease to represent the same project and environmental context that was originally assessed?
If the associated infrastructure, grid assumptions, environmental baseline, cumulative impacts and delivery timescale evolve substantially over more than a decade, should there not eventually be a point at which the underlying planning balance itself requires fresh scrutiny rather than successive extensions of the original consent framework?
Equally, communities and consultees originally responded to the project on the basis of a very different implementation timetable and infrastructure context from the one that now appears likely to exist in practice.
Adrian Brockless
Yell
