Planning permission for wind farms and other renewable energy sources, even projects inside previously sacrosanct national parks, will be easier to obtain as a result of new guidance to local authorities issued yesterday. The advice from John Prescott, the deputy prime minister, updates planning rules from 1993, before renewable energy programmes were being developed.

There are fears that the government target of 10% electricity from renewables by 2010 will not be met because of a small but highly organised lobby supported by figures such as David Bellamy, Noel Edmonds, Bernard Ingham and most recently the leader of the Conservative party, Michael Howard, who has opposed a proposal for a wind farm at Romney Marsh in his constituency. Even Prince Charles has been reported to have voiced his opposition to onshore wind farms.

Among the arguments used by some protesters, apart from the fact that they think wind farms are a scar on the landscape, is that wind is not a reliable technology and does not produce the energy its supporters claim.

The government has told local councillors to ignore such protests, and instructs local authorities to work on the basis that renewables are a necessary part of reaching the government's climate change targets.

Among the guidelines, which amount to instructions to local authorities, is that large wind farms and other renewable energy sources can be allowed right up to the boundary of national parks and "small-scale developments should be permitted within areas such as national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty and heritage coasts provided that there is no significant environmental detriment to the area concerned".

The government also wants local authorities to consider that new and existing updated developments being given planning permission should incorporate solar panels, biomass heating, small-scale wind turbines, photovoltaic cells and combined heat and power schemes.

The British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) was delighted by the decision because many applications by members are bogged down. It takes nearly 12 months for the average wind farm planning application in England to be determined. The advice will help speed up the process to approve around 1,000 onshore turbines still needing consent by the end of 2007 so that association members can build the additional 1,800 onshore turbines required to meet the government's 2010 renewables target.

Chris Tomlinson, the head of onshore wind at the BWEA, said: "This was desperately needed advice for planners and councillors to show the national need for renewables. It will enable to see past the misinformation of a small but very vociferous minority who oppose wind farms, frequently on completely spurious grounds."
But heavyweight opposition to the guidelines came yesterday from the Campaign to Protect Rural England, which said: "The planning policy seriously downplays the inevitable negative effects on landscape and the wider countryside that are threatened by a massive expansion in onshore renewable energy. And it fails to give strong planning tools which would help regional and local authorities to minimise damage. It will result in intense pressure for large-scale wind farms."
The editor of Country Life, Clive Aslet, who runs a campaign against wind farms said: "They are a third-rate technology, inefficient, ugly and expensive."
 

 
Up to 400,000 houses in the north of England could be demolished under plans by John Prescott to transform struggling regional economies.
And it won't just be empty homes. Some communities will see the wrecking ball destroy homes in a bid to tackle areas of housing market failure, where the price of homes plummet.

Most of the homes to be demolished are old-fashioned two-up, two-down terraces that have outlived their usefulness. Some will be knocked through to create bigger units. There are even plans to knock through whole streets to create loft-style business workshops. The 400,000 figure is double what was previously anticipated and spans a 10-year period.

The Deputy Prime Minister's Northern Way proposals will be outlined next month. Dubbed 'Prezzagrad', it will include proposals to build fast train links connecting Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds, Hull and Newcastle. It will also feature plans for northern universities to become catalysts for a new generation of 21st-century businesses. Newcastle University could become a global centre for researching potential stem cell therapies for incurable diseases after the go-ahead was given for the cloning of human embryos earlier this month.

In many northern towns whole streets of houses lie empty because they have been abandoned. The government is alarmed at the exodus of graduates from northern cities to the south-east, where the economy and house prices have grown at a faster pace than the rest of the country.
'It's true that the number of homes demolished will be much higher than was previously envisaged,' said a key official charged with overseeing Prescott's plans. 'People sometimes talk glibly about demolition but it isn't always the cheap option.'

New homes will be built in some areas while others will see landscaping and the creation of parks on a scale not seen since the Victorian age. The reforms will be driven through by regional development agencies, city councils and specially set up organisations that will assemble land and masterplans for new districts. Concerns that the bulk of funding will go to cities rather than towns such as Oldham, Burnley and Blackburn have been dismissed.
Prescott's northern proposals are in contrast to his plans for the south-east, which could see the building of 200,000 new homes, mostly for key workers who cannot get on the housing ladder.
 

Never again, says the Electoral Commission, can a British election be held on an all-postal ballot - with the sole exception of the very next election to be held, the North-East's referendum on an elected regional government, on November 4. The Commission's excuse for making this exception was so lame that its announcement was brought forward from September 13 to last Thursday, in the hope that, as Britain's thoughts turned to a bank holiday weekend and Kelly Holmes, no one would point out how unconvincing it was.

John Prescott is anxious for the referendum to go ahead by postal voting because he sees it as the only chance of saving his plan for an England divided under eight regional governments. Originally he had been hoping that the three safest Labour heartlands, in the North-East, the North-West and Yorkshire, could be relied on to vote Yes, and so set off a domino effect across the rest of the country.

Mr Prescott's desperation is evident in the latest "information leaflet" put out by his office, in eight languages, to the North-East's 1.9 million voters. Although this paean of praise for the benefits of regional government purports only to be giving "information", the game is given away by its carefully staged illustrations. These contrast young, attractive, affluent-looking Yes voters, giving the thumbs up to an elected assembly, with "typical" No voters, such as an old man with a cloth cap and a stick, a diminutive Asian shot in shadow and an Afro-Caribbean lady: a selection so blatant it should earn Mr Prescott an interview with the Commission for Racial Equality. On Friday, as the media again tried to raise a flicker of interest in this campaign, the BBC showed a Lib Dem spokesman on Palace Green in Durham waxing lyrical about how the people of the North-East were about to rise up en masse to vote for regional government. When the programme cut to Neil Herron, the director of the North-East's No campaign, the interviewer asked him why he was gazing up into the sky. He replied: "I'm looking for the pigs flying over Durham Cathedral."

I recently reported on the problems faced by various enterprising firms which have been told that they can no longer use "waste" materials ranging from cardboard to sewage, as fuel to generate energy. According to UK environment ministers such as Elliott Morley, this is because EC rules forbid "waste" products to be destined for anything other than disposal, by incineration or landfill. Thus Scottish Water, unless it wins an expensive court case, faces the closure of a plant specially built to turn sewage sludge into fuel for power stations, which cost £65 million.

A reader points out that the Home Office's leaflet Preparing for Emergencies, recently sent to all households, boasts that it is made from "75 per cent post-consumer waste" (the same is true of Mr Prescott's leaflet cited above). Perhaps Mr Morley can explain why he is not going to prosecute David Blunkett and Mr Prescott for acting in breach of EC law?