items tagged with Blythe Park

Press release 18/12/09

 Press release 20/05/2011

Bill Cash said today:

“I am delighted to have been told that Blythe Park Power has withdrawn its application for a natural gas-fired power station on land next to Blythe Park Business Park at Draycott-in-the-Moors within my constituency.

“I pay tribute to Jacquie Leach, Darren Tranter and all the campaigners of Villagers Voice Staffordshire Moorlands who helped to fight this huge battle. I have campaigned constantly and consistently with many of my constituents since we first found out about these £400m power station proposals.

“Blythe Park Power were seeking approval from the Department of Energy & Climate Change for permission to build the station so that the station could start construction in 2013, but the Department have today sent a communication out showing that the developers have withdrawn their application.”

The e-mail from the Department of Energy & Climate Change to developer’s states:

“Thank you for your email informing the Department that BPPL has withdrawn its application for the Secretary of State’s consent under section 36 of the Electricity Act 1989 to construct a 950MW CCGT power station at Blythe Park Business Park, Cresswell. The Department has now closed your application and no further action will be taken.”

Press release 13/11/09

Press release 19/10/09

Press release 16/11/09

• The development will drastically affect the health of the local community;
• The existing Blythe Park Power site is deemed to be unsuitable for any additional development and is a designated special landscape area;
• There are outstanding concerns over whether the developer has refused to participate in dialogue with the local community;
• There are better alternative sites elsewhere with substantially better access to the necessary services and an independent analysis needs to be done on this, for the reasons listed by my constituents in their analysis;
• The development will destroy this area of natural beauty;
• The development will be a monstrosity on the skyline and will be within a ten kilometer radius. It will severely and detrimentally impact the area;
• During construction, the pollution created will be deposited across in and around an area of outstanding beauty. The location of the development and its geography will lead to deposits being seen in surrounding areas such as Alton and Cheadle;
• Local residents will be caught in a property trap, with substantial reductions in property prices;
• The disruption of local roads, during development (closures etc) will have an adverse effect on local traffic especially people wanting to travel to Cheadle for shopping via the accepted route through Draycott. It will also affect the local bus service and postal deliveries;
• There is already a severe risk of flooding in the location identified by the proposal;
• The proposed site does not have a suitable significant power source and proposes to utilize a water source 6km away;
• This very same site experienced severe pollution issues in September 2009 leading to contamination and destruction of wildlife in a thirty mile stretch of the River Trent, a six kilometer pipeline extends this risk to all localities accommodating the pipeline;
• The site is designated special landscape area, with the local community in significantly closer proximity than any other equivalent development;
• The site has historic and ongoing issues with toxic waste, any major development will unsettle this waste leading to serious health concerns for the local community;
• The infrastructure leading to the site is wholly inadequate;
• The development will have disastrous consequences for local wildlife;
• During development the village and surrounding areas will become an extended construction site, in an area that is designated a special landscape area;
• Following development the community and surrounding areas will be blighted by significant noise and light pollution, this in an area that is already blighted by inappropriate surfacing to a nearby major transport route;
• A development of this scale will destroy the lives of the local and wider community, with property prices during and after development being negatively affected;
• The proposed site for the development is a known flood plain, which as recently as 1987 experienced serious flooding;
• Staffordshire County Council and Staffordshire Moorlands District Council have made it officially clear that they are in complete objection to these proposals;
• This proposal stands alone as a bid that does not conform to the pre-requisites of the Electricity Act i.e. granting permission to an excessive number of proposals.  This proposal is currently being considered in isolation and not in the context of other proposed power stations;
• Health, safety and security risk of 1000 workers on site for three/ four years;
• The development is projected to deliver between 50-100 jobs, but a review of the commercial and economic viability of the development should be made in the context of the negative impact that the development will have on thousands of local families;
• Proposed working hours are inconsistent with the ambience and beauty of the locality;
• The noise pollution generated will be unacceptable and no mitigation can be made to offset the severe negative impact of a development of this size and scale;
• The power source is non sustainable, is costly and is not environmentally friendly;
• The proposal is speculative by nature and hence leads to dangerous and significant concerns for the local and surrounding community;
• Due to the significant nature of the scheme the developers and the DECC have yet to offer the provisional finance aid for the designated local community engagement team, at their current levels of remuneration, to ensure full and proper engagement with the local community.