Due to concerns raised about potential noise levels in the village, we conducted a further more extensive assessment which is quite technical but does conclude that noise may only be faintly audible under rare conditions, i.e. downwind at high wind speeds.
We hope to submit a planning application within the next 10 days.
Robert Gosling, Hill Top Farm.
To access the report, please click on the photo.
Open letter to the community about the proposed wind turbine – 5th May 2011.
Proposed wind turbine for Hill Top Farm: exhibition boards & questionnaire – 17th May 2011.
Update on proposed wind turbine – 1st June 2011
Wind Turbine – Reply to questions raised – 17th June 2011
PARWICH.ORG 
Whatever the noise level, I do worry this will set a precedent and open the door to numerous wind turbines in the area. I recently saw a different sort of windmill, which was smaller than a turbine, more like a corkskrew action. I think the idea is that it whips up the wind rather than churns it (if that makes sense…)
What Debbie says regarding precedents has a lot of truth in it and the village seems to be very complacent to this fact! Mr Gosling’s consultants are obviously very slick in their presentation and no doubt have experience in these issues, they will no doubt get a nice bonus if they win approval.
We should not forget that actually it is not Mr Gosling or indeed any other farmer who is investing in these wind turbines that are springing up in the countryside, but the tax payer, that is you and me folks!
Likewise it is again the tax payer who is supporting the farmer through single payments, to look after and manage the countryside (something which is generally not happening if the latest RSPB reports are to be believed), are we already subsidising farmers too much and having no return for our hard earned cash? This argument has been raging in the corridors of Brussels and the Ministry of Agriculture for years!
The question is therefore this, is placing an urban structure in England’s first national park a good use of tax payers money? when the ethos of the park is to maintain its beauty and integrity, should we as local people and tax payers have an opinion? perhaps we do not care what happens anymore …. even in our own back yards? Some comments please.
Gary P.
Sorry but I forgot to say in my message above, Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) based farm subsidies amount currently to 42% of the total EU budget, and in the UK the CAP is calculated to cost each household an average £398, that is adding £7.65 a week to your household bills, before anyone says, yes I know the Min of Ag is the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, I suppose we should note the emphasis on ENVIRONMENT
Gary G
I must say, I’m all in favour of clean energy. But what is a National Park for? Surely it is to preserve the appearance of this area of natural beauty for posterity. So while we should back wind turbines, shouldn’t this only be outside the National Park boundary? Otherwise the National Park’s purpose of preserving something worthwhile becomes a joke. The National Park is in danger of looking just the same as everywhere else if it lets wind turbines become a part of the landscape.
I wholly agree, clean energy is important in the world today, but I am against another scam to rip of money from the tax payer in order that the government (all parties) can save face as a result of their poorly conceived policies and targets set to meet international agreements on climate change such as Kyoto.
It costs two-and-a-half times more to generate electricity from a wind farm than from a combined heat and power plant! This is why one billion £ are collected by the energy companies in the form of stealth taxes from you and me through our already over priced energy bills to subsidize the renewable energy industry for the government.
The government’s own Public Accounts Committee recently condemned wind farms as being bad value for money and stated “The Government has failed to bring on other green technologies which are better value for money. It’s simply green tokenism.”
So we are being asked to support a wind turbine, which at least in my view is a visually inappropriate construction in a national park, which is costing us all money to have, and the only person who benefits is the land owner who makes a nice profit over the next few years and gets free energy to run a business which is already heavily subsidized by you and me!
The UN – FAO report “Livestock’s Long Shadow” estimated that 18% of green houses gases is caused by livestock, now if farmers were to invest in digesters to convert farm waste into biogas then perhaps things may be different, after all there is something called the “polluter pays principle” and the people of Parwich would benefit, because then, the old saying “ where there is muck there is brass” might apply and the road over Hill Top would be much cleaner I’m sure!
Gary P
I am quite deliberately stirring the pot with some rather different views, but then I would, coming from the land of the windmills … where no-one blinks an eye-lid about the many small-scale wind turbines positioned near farms.
Personally, I think wind turbines are beautiful, elegant and purposeful structures, maximising nature’s free energy, and in a small way helping to slow down the depletion of fossil fuel resources elsewhere.
Turbines would be better described as ‘man-made’ rather than ‘urban’ structures, as you wouldn’t find wind turbines in truely urban environments. There are many man-made structures in the National Park landscape, most of which we don’t even notice nor consider as ugly.
Needless to say that most National Parks are obviously prime locations for wind turbines. To exclude National Parks as potential locations for wind turbines, seems illogic and possibly even against the principles of National Parks. We are very fortunate to live in this beautiful landscape, many people aren’t. If, carefully positioned, wind turbines can help unwelcome development elsewhere, e.g. ultimately the need for yet another power station, than that should be considered as a worthwhile function of a National Park in the bigger picture. I am tempted to loosely compare this kind of development with the reservoirs that most people now love to visit!
Please don’t deduct from the above that I would like to see large wind farms dotted around the National Park, but I believe that the National Park has a duty to consider small-scale development of alternative energy, as we cannot adopt the ‘not-in-my-backyard’ approach.
I obviously would not wish any property to suffer from unacceptable background noise and hope that the experts’ assessments will prevent positioning of turbines in inappropriate locations .Unfortunately the technical detail is beyond me …
You will have noticed that I have taken the ring-road round Brussels as I don’t really want to go there, nor do I know my way in and out…
I am looking forward to reading some different views!