I’m responding to the well written article ‘Heritage or Climate’ in the 13/1 issue.
As a Green Party councillor I appreciate heritage but naturally prioritise the climate emergency. The full complement of solar panels should have been approved on the Symondsbury and Litton Cheney schools, overriding the objections from conservation officers at Dorset Council.
No doubt those officers prefer a future where they can admire Dorset’s pristine, unaltered listing buildings using scuba diving equipment (if they could get that on over their blinkers!). But to be fair they are specialists who naturally prioritise conservation; the real fault lies higher up in the Planning Department. At that level the responsibility is to balance conflicting objectives. In this case it should be clear to the head of Planning that, with Dorset Council having declared a Climate Emergency, that consideration had to take priority.
This needs to be resolved because an excessive focus on the past threatens our future. An increasing number of large solar and wind energy projects are likely and we can’t go on making ludicrous decisions like the rejection of Navitas Bay windfarm.
Julian Jones
Bridport Green Party Councillor
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