Messing with Hydroelectric Projects 

 The Pershore Debacle

Some people have been saying why are we whining? As I have said before - it's not just us - other people have been cheated and in one case terminally disadvantaged by the actions of "the regulator." (The Small Hydro Company)

SEPEL - a prominent small hydro outfit (Good enough for The Queen) applied for a licence at Pershore in Warwickshire on behalf of the Avon Navigation Trust (ANT Website) and were subjected to the same old game that resulted in us "going legal" at Avoncliff - i.e. they applied first and were subject to delays and a second application was made (by the same agent / company who applied second at Avoncliff and identical EA staff "dealt" with the application)  which was promoted over SEPEL's application by means of delay, arbitrary action and "gaming" the statutory procedures.

I won't comment on the SEPEL scheme in detail beyond saying that not only did the EA cheat SEPEL's client out of a licenece - the licence that the EA awarded was thrown out as inappropriate by the local planning authority! (We understand it was the Kaplan turbine that the planners refused - now where have we seen that before?)

 

Please judge for yourself and have a read of two documents that lay out some of what happened to SEPEL's application.

An examination of the EA's policy acrobatics
some might say disorientated contortions...

David DeChambeau's submission to the Planning Inspectorate

The matter went to H.M.  Planning Inspectorate - who were powerless to act since the unlawful awarding of a licence can't be reversed by a Planning Inspector... (It has to go to Judicial Review) and the EA knew that which is why they unlawfully awarded a licence...  See The Evesham Journal 

So - to recap - the EA administratively "gamed", lied, egregiously delayed (the EA even claimed to have "misplaced" the paperwork!) and then finally - the arbitrarily selected "winning" application - which shouldn't have been accepted in the first place -  gets kicked out by local planners? (Who now appear to have given up and gone along with the EA...)

At the risk of boring you all rigid with whining - repeat - there are questions the EA should be forced to answer about the actions of their officials.

And then... there's the matter of The Canal and River Trust and The Small Hydro Company and that scheme.... detailed in a British Waterways press release which has been the subject of an interesting FoI