Daily Mail
"....Our crack team had spotted any number of serious flaws in the planning application. Nearly every conservation body going had raised objections, including English Heritage.
Quite why the planning officer had decided to override these objections – and in a protected landscape area too – was a mystery.
A mystery, it turned out, that the council’s planning committee found as baffling as we did. At a packed meeting – preceded by a demonstration by the village’s placard-wielding children – we were first astonished, then almost tearful with gratitude, as one by one the members of the planning committee at Daventry District Council stood up to say how appalled they were that such a blight was even being considered in an area so beautiful and unspoilt. They rejected the idea by nine votes to one.
I’d love to end the story at the glorious pub celebration where jubilant villagers – many of whom had never met until we were united through struggle – toasted the wisdom of those councillors and the power of local democracy. But sadly I can’t.
Since then I’ve heard the landowner is going to appeal against the decision and try to force through a wind turbine that no one (except him) wants and which will disfigure our neighbourhood.
Our community’s plight is by no means an unusual one.
Something has gone badly awry with both our energy policy and our planning laws. Is anyone at Westminster listening?"
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