Our position

The wrong scale, in the wrong place.

Let us be clear from the start: we are not against wind power, and we are not against tackling climate change. Many of us live alongside the existing Ray Wind Farm and have done so without complaint. Ray II is different — in height, in scale, and in what it asks this small corner of Northumberland to absorb.

Why we object

Each of these is a planning consideration that carries weight in a Development Consent Order examination. Together, they make the case.

1. Overbearing height. The existing turbines are 125 metres to blade tip. Ray II proposes up to 230 metres — roughly 105 metres taller, and higher than Blackpool Tower or the London Eye. Turbines of this size are not a continuation of what is already here; they are a step change that would dominate the skyline for miles in every direction.
2. Cumulative impact — enough is enough. This part of Northumberland already hosts a great deal of onshore wind: Ray I's 16 turbines, plus schemes such as Green Rigg, Middlemoor and others across the surrounding moors. Each application is judged partly on what it adds to what is already there. Ray II would tip an already heavily developed landscape past the point of reasonable balance. It is a concern shared beyond this campaign: the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust warns that planning judges each wind farm on its own, with no requirement to weigh the combined impact of several across a whole landscape — the exact situation on these moors.
3. Battery storage — unanswered safety questions. The proposal includes a large Battery Energy Storage System. Lithium battery installations carry fire and thermal-runaway risks that are difficult for a rural fire service to reach and control, and the arrangements for safe end-of-life decommissioning are too often left vague. We are pressing Vattenfall for firm, funded commitments on both.
4. Peat, carbon and habitat. Upland moorland stores carbon in peat built up over thousands of years. Turbine foundations, access tracks and cabling disturb that peat and the habitat it supports. A renewable scheme should be judged on its true climate balance — the carbon and nature lost in construction, not only the electricity generated. These uplands are also home to birds such as curlew, golden plover and birds of prey; the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust warns that large wind farms can drive them away through collision risk and lost nesting ground (read the summary).
5. Living next to it. Noise, shadow flicker, and years of construction traffic on narrow rural roads fall on the same handful of villages. Taller turbines are visible and audible from further away. These are real, daily impacts on the people who live here — not abstractions.
6. Tranquillity and the rural economy. Open landscape, quiet and some of the darkest skies in England are exactly what draw visitors — and underpin part of the local economy. A ring of 230-metre turbines with aviation lighting changes that character at night as well as by day, and it cannot be undone for a generation.
7. A fair hearing. Because Ray II is decided nationally rather than by the county council, ordinary residents have to organise early simply to be heard. National energy policy gives large renewable schemes significant support — which is exactly why the local case has to be made clearly, specifically and on the evidence. That is what this campaign exists to do.