Power and perception – From paradigms of specialist disciplines and opinions of expert groups to an acceptance for the planning of onshore windfarms in England – Making a case for Social Impact Assessment (SIA)

Tara Muthoora and Thomas B. Fischer

Land Use Policy, 2019, vol. 89, issue C

Abstract: Starting point for the research underlying this paper was the question why there were low rates of planning approval for Community Energy (CE) onshore windfarms in England, despite an overall supportive policy position. In order to get an indication for possible reasons, results of an in-depth review of one community driven project are provided; the Valley Wind Cooperative (VWC) in Kirklees, West Yorkshire. Importantly, a disconnect between policy and practice is observed. Views and associated perceptions of experts of certain disciplines, including e.g. landscape architecture, ecology and tourism development represent specialised but not necessarily more widely shared values of local communities. They play a particular important role in explaining the disconnect. In the presence of an overall positive attitude towards windfarm proposals of local communities, this is problematic as it prevents socially accepted projects from gaining approval. Whilst social impact assessment (SIA) can facilitate debate and community support, trade-offs between different views need to be balanced and should not be dominated by perceptions of particular (disciplinary) groups.

Keywords: Social Impact Assessment (SIA); Community energy; Onshore windfarm planning; Social acceptance; Participation; Expert opinion; Statutory consultees; Power (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837718319641
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:89:y:2019:i:c:s0264837718319641

DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2019.104198

Access Statistics for this article

Land Use Policy is currently edited by Jaap Zevenbergen

More articles in Land Use Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joice Jiang ().