The United Kingdom’s new Labour government has lifted a nine-year de facto ban on new onshore wind farms and will consider whether to designate large wind farms as nationally significant infrastructure projects, according to The Guardian.
Restrictions were instituted in 2015 by then-prime minister David Cameron due to concerns about the impact of wind-turbine damage on rural communities, reports the Institution of Engineering and Technology. The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), which sets out government planning policies for England and how these are expected to be applied, has, until now, included two footnotes that essentially bind onshore wind development in red tape. The footnotes mandate onshore wind development can only proceed in areas either allocated in a development plan or through local development orders, neighborhood development orders and community right-to-build orders, or where the proposal has proven community support. This essentially bl
