Gas fired power station plans at Old Hutton resubmitted

A new application for a gas fired power station in open countryside near Old Hutton, three miles east of Kendal, that was turned down in January this year, has been submitted and the public have until Friday to submit comments.

 

This new application for a gas fired power station at the site is without the battery storage facility this time.

 

The application covers an area of just over three hectares of land, in open countryside close to Old Hutton village, and will roughly double the size of the existing electricity substation there. Many in local communities have campaigned against the proposals since their original submission in May 2017.

 

Friends of the Lake District object to the proposals on the basis of detrimental landscape and visual impacts, as well as significant transport impacts on the rural road network in the area, and through surrounding villages and hamlets, and loss of mature hedgerow and trees.

 

The size of the proposed power station – of 49.99 MW, means that it falls just under the threshold for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (of 50 MW), which would have to be submitted to the Government Planning Inspectorate, rather than the local authority, and undergo a different planning application process called development consent, with specific additional requirements.

Additionally the development is contrary to South Lakeland District Council’s new proposed Development Management Polices, including DM1 ‘General Requirements for all development’ and DM2 ‘Achieving Sustainable High Quality Design’.

 

Lorayne Wall, planning officer at Friends of the Lake District said: “We think that this location in the open countryside between two National Parks is the wrong place for significant energy infrastructure, and the visual impacts of the scheme would threaten the rural nature of the area and have a wider impact on far reaching views from sites such as the Helm near Kendal.”

You can send comments on the plan to South Lakeland District Council before Friday 20th July.

 

View our response to the proposal here.

 

View the proposal on the South Lakeland District Council (SLDC) website here by searching on reference SL/2018/0388. You can also arrange to view the applications at the SLDC offices in Kendal.

 

You can respond to this application by submitting comments via the SLDC website, or by email, send your comments to [email protected] OR write to:

Development Management Group Manager,

South Lakeland House,

Lowther Street,
Kendal, LA9 4DL

 

You must quote the reference SL/2018/0388 in your correspondence. The official deadline for making comments has now passed, but you can still send comments in until the planning committee meeting at which the decision will be made. There is currently no date for this.