IT is good to now Councillor Keane was showing his green credentials when he arrived at the planning committee on his bike, when the two applications for turbines at Coldham and March were considered. It is just a pity your photographer was not able to s

IT is good to now Councillor Keane was showing his green credentials when he arrived at the planning committee on his bike, when the two applications for turbines at Coldham and March were considered.

It is just a pity your photographer was not able to stay for the end of the meeting to take some photographs of the wind turbine developers as they left in their large 4x4 vehicles.

As an opponent to these two developments, who spoke at the meeting, I was both amazed and very saddened by the quality of discussion by some of our elected planning committee members in dealing with these major proposals.

Of the 11 committee members present, three members never spoke during the two hour consideration of these planning applications, four raised issues relating to impact on bridleways, listed buildings, horse, etc and only three or four members spoke of their concern about the impact that these large structures would have on the landscape.

Councillor Roger Green said, and these are his actual words: "It is unfortunate that we as a council do not yet have a policy on wind turbines as this would help us tremendously in our deliberations. I find it difficult today with our two reports. I am also confused by the fact that other neighbouring councils have absolutely no wind turbines at all and yet we have a proliferation of them. Does there not come a time to say, enough is enough? There will be a time when our grandchildren will look around the Fens, and everywhere they look, they will see turbines. People will say the landscape is completely ruined by these turbines and who were the idiots who allowed all these to be built?

Councillor Philip Hatton stated: "The landscape has already been ruined and the extra seven turbines at Coldham would, therefore, not have a detrimental impact on the landscape."

So there we have it, members of the very committee supposedly in control of protecting our landscape are admitting that the landscape is being ruined by these developments, and implying that they, the planning committee, will be considered as "those idiots who allowed all this to happen".

Has no one on the district council ever asked the simple question, if we are going to encourage major industrial development in the countryside, shouldn't we first have a policy to control it?

I believe the Planning Committee should now be renamed the "Disaster Committee".

TREVOR WATSON

The Laurels

March