Community benefits are in the news again. Both The Highland Council (here) and Scottish Borders Council (here) are discussing proposals to set up central funds for wind farm developers’ contributions.
It’s a thorny issue. Wind farm antis see it as clouding the issue, and tantamount to bribery. Developers tend to accept the role of community benefit payments, but voice frustration at the delay involved in agreeing the approach to be taken.
There is the wider question of why there are community benefit payments for some forms of development but not others. Wind farms can be visible over larger distances than other forms of development, so that could be used to justify an argument for community benefit payments as a form of compensation. However, the reality seems to be that the practice has emerged not for any intellectual reason, but because developers are prepared to offer the payments. If this is an illustration of some form of environmental justice, it’s a concept that is in its most embyronic form.
Rather than grapple with the issue, the planning system has swept it under the carpet. The Scottish Government guidance (here) is that community benefit payments are only a material planning consideration if the payments are necessary to make the proposed development acceptable in planning terms. Unlike planning gain packages in other forms of development such as housing, renewables developers do not appear to have an appetite for arguing that community benefit payments are material considerations. Presumably the purpose of the payments is achieved in other ways.
The general approach is for payments to be made into a fund, which can then be used to pay for projects to benefit the community (example).
The devil is in the detail. Who should the developer negotiate with? Who should administer the fund? What should it be used for?
Developers and local communities are not keen on the funds being administered by councils. The administration costs can be high, and there is always a suspicion that money is used for projects which the council might otherwise have funded.
Community councils might seem the obvious group to act on behalf of communities, but there is confusion over whether negotiating community benefit payments might compromise their role as statutory consultee on the related wind farm planning application. There can also be rivalry among communities for control of the fund.
The community have a “virtual” turbine in the wind farm at Fintry, Stirlingshire (a share equivalent to 1 turbine). Some see this as a preferable approach, but not every community will be prepared to brave the financial consequences of ownership, as opposed to regular payments of agreed sums.
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