FOLLOWING Dr Gary Vanstone's letter (May 23) in which he expressed concern on behalf of MABRAKE about renewable energy in West Devon, I felt it was a good idea to outline what is happening with this issue.

We are aware of similar concerns felt by many in the community and are sympathetic to the contentious nature of such proposals.

However, there is a clear message from Government that all communities need to recognise and take responsibility for their contributions to energy generation from renewable and low carbon sources. At a local level, we need to think carefully about how we can do this whilst still protecting the very special and sensitive environments which we highly value.

Making decisions about renewable energy proposals will always be difficult. We have no control over when or where applications come forward but we can do our best to respond in an informed and objective manner.

Planning policy and guidance is essential if we are to do this properly. I would like to reassure Dr Vanstone that there are already policies in place which require proposals to undergo considerable scrutiny in order to establish if the impacts are acceptable or not.

We are proactively developing more local guidance to manage renewable energy on both a commercial and domestic scale and will be sharing this work with the community over the summer.

We aim to have the guidance in place by autumn this year so that we remain in a strong position to make the most of proposals which have benefits for our area and be firm in defending ourselves against those which do not.

Cllr Robert Oxborough

Chairman

West Devon Borough Council Community Services Committee