In this week’s Nimby Watch, we’re off to the Cotswolds – an area of outstanding natural beauty in Oxfordshire.
Okay then, let’s go find some Nimbys – whereabouts this time? We’re off to perhaps the most archetypical bit of verdant, rolling, English countryside there is – the Cotswolds. Sadly for us, we’ll be spending our time in a planning meeting of West Oxfordshire District Council.
I’ve got a bad feeling about this already. That seems needlessly pessimistic. What’s raised your hackles?
Well, for one, ‘West Oxfordshire District Council’ sounds eerily familiar for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on. Ah yes. You may well remember them if you’ve ever watched the Amazon Prime show ‘Clarkson’s Farm’, as they’re the nearest the series has to a recurring villain. The council is essentially the nemesis of everything Jeremy Clarkson does to try to keep his farm viable – they ban a restaurant, a pub, a carpark, a farm track and at various points try to shut down the farm shop, too.
I knew the name rang a bell. So, is this about Jeremy Clarkson, then? That’s a relief – I’d worried that the scenic countryside might mean we were talking about solar farms again. Oh dear. We are, in fact, talking about solar farms again – because West Oxfordshire recently overruled their professional planning officials to turn down a solar farm that could have produced enough energy to power all the households in the town of Witney (population c33,000).
Another day, another rejected solar project. I’m sure they had their reasons, though, for overruling the paid staff whose job it is to evaluate these projects. They carefully thought this through, right? Well, something unusual was clearly going on in their heads, as an account of the meeting by the volunteer-run Oxford Clarion revealed.
Conservative councillor Nick Leverton told the meeting: ‘Most of you will have seen on the motorway an electric car burning away… there are too many incidents where just a small chance becomes a big chance. I’ll remind you of Aberfan in 1966; 144 people died, 116 of them children.’
Hang on, Aberfan – isn’t that the most notorious coal mining disaster in British history? The one in which the spoil tip from the pit turned into a lethal landslide that hit a school? Surely he’s not evoking that. He is, in fact, evoking that – to argue against an entirely different technology with a completely different risk profile. It’s an analogy which is as stunning as it is insulting.
I’ve just read that back and… it’s worse than I thought. I was so shocked at the Aberfan bit that I missed the bit where he suggested electric cars keep setting on fire. Yes, it does seem that councillor Leverton may not have realised that while battery fires are, of course, a possibility, ‘normal’ cars also pose something of a fire risk too, not least because they’re full of petrol, which is famously quite combustible itself. In many ways, that’s the point.
Did no-one try to raise this issue with him? As it turns out, the Labour councillor who chaired this meeting was a firefighter himself, and tried to explain that he’d personally attended many car fires, none of them had featured electric vehicles. This wasn’t enough to turn the tide of the meeting, however. Councillors fretted that if the solar farm did set alight, it might affect the water supply to a nearby home or cause other issues.
Sorry, I feel like I’m going insane here. Did these councillors really turn down a serious solar project because they think batteries are unproven technology? I’m sure they’d try to frame it in more sensible terms, but on the available evidence… pretty much yes, yes they did. Which is all the more extraordinary given that it’s a virtual certainty everyone in the meeting owns a mobile phone – completely with lithium-ion battery – that they’ll carry around for much of the time in a pocket just millimetres from their genitals.
I’m guessing the council just doesn’t care about climate change on green energy, and these are just flimsy excuses to avoid saying that. It’s not impossible, but they very much claim otherwise. The council’s got solar panels on the roof of its own headquarters. It’s declared a climate emergency. It just won’t ever actually do anything.
This is becoming a pattern across the country, isn’t it? It is becoming grimly repetitive, yes. If we’re trying to bring new energy online, boost economic growth, and actually build anything, small tweaks on planning aren’t going to work. Maybe we need a ‘West Oxfordshire Test’ – if we want to judge any planning reform, we’ve got to ask: will it stop this nonsense, or not? And if it’s the latter, throw it out.
Right you are. To the barricades, comrade – to the barricades for the West Oxfordshire Test!
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