By Worth Valley Against Calderdale Windfarm with thanks to Ban the Burn

In its previous incarnation as Calderdale Wind Farm, the developers began the planning process back in late 2023 by submitting a Scoping Report to Calderdale Council.  It was not well received by the various consultees.

In April 2025, Calderdale Wind Farm rebranded itself as Calderdale Energy Park (CEP) and became one of the first wind farms in England to apply for a Development Consent Order (DCO) using the new Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects planning process.

A few weeks ago, the Planning Inspectorate added Calderdale Energy Park to its National Infrastructure project list and indicated it is at the pre-application stage.

This is where the Calderdale Energy Park starts to create their application. During this process, Calderdale Energy Park is required to consult with people and organisations in the area. They must also create detailed documents about the impact the project could have on the environment.

The pre-application process is critical for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects like Calderdale Energy Park. It is front-loaded – many key decisions about the proposed project are made BEFORE Calderdale Energy Park finalises the actual Development Consent Order application and submits it to the Planning Inspectorate.

So, although the final decision is with the Secretary of State, there are important roles in the pre-application process for Calderdale Council as the ‘host’ local authority (i.e. where the proposed development is located) – and also for ‘neighbouring’ local authorities that border Calderdale (Bradford, Burnley, Kirklees, Pendle, Rochdale, Rossendale).

According to Planning Inspectorate Guidance, Calderdale Council will make arrangements for joint working with neighbouring local authorities as necessary.

Calderdale Council (and neighbouring local authorities) have many roles in Calderdale Energy Park’s pre-application process. The campaign wants to make sure that Council Planning Departments and Councillors are accountable to the public for these roles. Under the Aarhus Convention the public has a right to early involvement in environmental decision making.

Key local authorities’ roles include responding to Calderdale Energy Park’s scoping report. The Planning Inspectorate will consult both host and neighbouring local authorities about Calderdale Energy Park’s scoping report. Local authorities are asked to respond within 28 days to allow the Planning Inspectorate time to consider the responses before adopting the scoping opinion.

The pre-application stage will also include new roles for relevant local authorities such as:

• engaging with the applicant about their programme document
• engaging in an ‘adequacy of consultation milestone’ before the application is submitted
• maintaining ‘Principal Areas of Disagreement Summary Statements’

Different activities that are likely to need approval under the local authority’s internal governance arrangements, often within tight timescales, include:

• scoping response (28 days)
• statement of community consultation response (28 days)
• principal areas of disagreement summary statement
• non-statutory and statutory consultation response (deadline for response provided by the applicant, and we’ve already had the non-statutory consultation)
• adequacy of consultation milestone response
• adequacy of consultation representation (14 days)
• All this takes Planning Department resources and planning. The Planning Inspectorate Guidance indicates that local authorities should arrange agreed powers of delegation at Cabinet as early as possible during the pre-application stage. This is so that officers can respond quickly and effectively to different activities, because the time frame is too tight to fit in with Councillors’ Cabinet and Committee meetings. We need to know that Councils have made proper arrangements for Planning Department resources and planning.

What you can do now

If you live or work in one of the local authority areas, below, please email your ward councillors and the councillor responsible for climate action, about Calderdale Energy Park’s pre-application stage in the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project’s planning process:

Bradford (Find your councillors here )

Burnley (Find your councillors here )

Calderdale (Find your councillors here)

Pendle (Find your councillors here)

Rochdale (Find your councillors here)

Rossendale (Find your councillors here)

Please consider making these points:

You could make the following points in your email:

You would like to know the arrangements your Council has made or is making for their significant role as statutory consultees in the pre-application stage of Calderdale Energy Park’s pre-application process, and the anticipated deadlines for action on key pre-application documents, such as

• scoping response (28-day turnaround for the Council)
• statement of community consultation response (28 days)
• principal areas of disagreement summary statement
• non-statutory and statutory consultation response (deadline for response provided by the applicant, and we’ve already had the non-statutory consultation)
• adequacy of consultation milestone response
• adequacy of consultation representation (14 days)
• According to Planning Inspectorate Guidance, the Council’s initial activity in Calderdale Energy Park’s pre-application stage will have been its response to Calderdale Energy Park’s six-week non-statutory consultation that ended on June 10th. You would like to know what your Council’s response was, so please would they send you a copy?

You are worried about the many errors and omissions in Calderdale Energy Park’s environmental information about Walshaw Moor in its non-statutory consultation brochure and other information sources. You support the campaign’s call for Calderdale Council and other neighbouring local authorities, in their role as statutory consultees, to tell Calderdale Energy Park they need to correct these errors and omissions as soon as possible, and to carry out a supplementary non-statutory consultation on its new information. Otherwise, the misleading environmental information will infect Calderdale Energy Park’s subsequent pre-application documents and render them invalid.

All the pre-application documents matter, but it is particularly crucial that the Council send decent feedback on Calderdale Energy Park’s scoping report, and their Statement of Community Consultation. Please ask your councillors to explain how the Council’s planning department will take into account Councillors’ and the public’s views when responding to Calderdale Energy Park’s Scoping Report and Statement of Community Consultation, and how the responses will be made public.

When a Development Consent Order application is submitted, the Planning Inspectorate will not accept it for examination if the council do not accept that the consultation met the aims of the Statement of Community Consultation, so it needs to be something the consultation can be clearly judged against.

‘How the planning process works for CEP and what you can do’ by Ban the Burn August campaign actions is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International

For interviews and press/media enquiries please contact:  

Lydia MacKinnon - 07766 333114

Penny Price - 07771 737274

stopcalderdalewindfarm@gmail.com