In yesterday’s debate on ‘Planning policy for new power lines’, Shadow Minister for Housing and Planning, Mark Isherwood MS, spoke and voted in favour of updating ‘Planning Policy Wales’ to protect affected communities and landscapes in Wales.
The Welsh Conservatives also proposed an additional amendment requiring health impact assessments when undergrounding new power lines near homes.
Speaking in the debate, Mr Isherwood said:
“Undergrounding cables providing electrical power or telecommunications, rather than hanging them on poles or towers, helps improve system reliability and reduce the risk of outages during high winds, thunderstorms, heavy snow or ice storms.
“Undergrounding also helps in wild fire prevention.
“An added benefit is the aesthetic quality of the landscape without the powerlines.
“Although undergrounding can increase the capital cost of electric power transmission and distribution, it decreases operating costs over the lifetime of the cables.
“Further, calculations by developers that the cost of undergrounding is around twice that of overhead lines ignores the costs of decommissioning which must take place – millions at the expense of UK electricity bill payers after 30 years - whereas there are no decommissioning costs with undergrounding.
“Although there are also other related issues such as topography and geology, we must also consider the impact on local communities.
“For example, representatives of the community in Cefn Meiriadog, St Asaph, told me last year ‘there are decisions being made distant from North Wales, directly affecting North Wales communities disproportionally: they appear to be disjointed, with poor or non-existent cumulative effects management, led by companies making very large profits, with scant regard for affected communities, other than the obligatory ‘in-person events’ and promised ‘community benefit funds’.
“The Welsh Conservative position is there needs to be a reform of related planning policies in Wales.
“Planning Policy Wales clearly states cables should be undergrounded, but developers often say it is not financially viable.
“However, all these developments should be designed, in the first instance, to comply with Planning Policy Wales.
“Welsh Ministers therefore need to be stronger in following their own guidance, rather than allowing arguments of cost to justify circumvention of these planning policies.
“To facilitate this and to deliver better focused proactive engagement with Energy Companies, the related wording in Planning Policy Wales clearly needs to be toughened up.
“We will therefore be supporting this motion, whilst also proposing an additional amendment calling on the Welsh Government ‘to ensure that, in accordance with the precautionary principle, proposals for the undergrounding of new power lines should require health impact assessments when their proximity to dwellings raises serious future health concerns’.
Although this amendment was passed, Labour then defeated the final motion.