Nick MacKinnon is a freelance teacher of Maths, English and Medieval History, and lives above Haworth, in the last inhabited house before Top Withens = Wuthering Heights. In 1992 he founded the successful Campaign to Save Radio 4 Long Wave while in plaster following a rock-climbing accident on Skye. His poem ‘The metric system’ won the 2013 Forward Prize. His topical verse and satire appears in the Spectator, and his puzzles and problems in the Sunday Times and American Mathematical Monthly. Email: [email protected]
Turbine 42/38 Lower Stones SD 96638 33136///prank.degrading.donation
I have written most of this blog in a much more serious way than usual because it will be the evidence base for a legal letter requiring the postponement of the Public Consultation on the grounds of systemic carelessness. The lawyers at CWF Ltd will have to answer this letter. Looking back, the Walshaw Turbines series falls into three seasons. Season 1 was from the first ignorant walk to Mere Stones in the dusk to the collapse of CWF on Jackson Ridge. Season 2 was the post mortem of CWF in which we began serious fieldwork against the day that the developers had a second pop. Series 3 begins on 29 April 2025 with a walk to a phantom turbine.
On 29 April 2025 Calderdale Wind Farm Ltd launched their second go at Walshaw Moor which they are calling Calderdale Energy Park (CEP). It will be no surprise to regular readers to learn that the launch had a new batch of hilariously useless maps, with new categories of engineering, ecological, hydrological, and aerodynamic error.
Our turbine in this blog is T42 of the CEP layout on the day it was launched. The problem, for CWF Ltd and their new Project Director Christian Egal is that CEP has only 41 turbines…
On the systemic carelessness of Calderdale Wind Farm Ltd
This paper explains why the public consultation for Calderdale Energy Park (CEP) must be postponed. It will describe a pattern of systemic carelessness in the management of CWF Ltd for which the evidence base extends from September 2023 up to the publication of the CEP proposal on 29 April 2025, and then the many corrections that had to be made to the CEP documents on 1 May 2025.
The paper forms the evidence for a legal letter to the new Project Director Christian Egal, requiring that the public consultation be postponed, and will show that the culture of systemic carelessness at CWF Ltd has already begun to affect his own performance. This is remarkable because he is a highly experienced wind farm consultant, and that he has fallen into a morass so quickly is a measure of the extent of well-documented problems at Calderdale Wind Farm Ltd.
The postponement must allow the public reasonable time to do the fieldwork and research to check the CEP documents. From now on, the public must check by direct fieldwork every document presented by CWF Ltd, because they cannot be trusted.
The proposal for Calderdale Energy Park has unravelled less than a week into the public consultation. A postponement may also allow the Project Director to purge the culture of systemic carelessness at CWF Ltd described in this paper.
The author of this paper, Nick MacKinnon, does field work and research on the various Walshaw Moor wind farms that CWF Ltd have promoted (four to date). He writes and edits fortnightly blog by members of the Walshaw Turbines Research Group, each focussing on a named turbine The blog is published by Dr Mark Avery under the title Walshaw Turbines. Dr Avery is a prominent environmentalist and the former conservation director of the RSPB. This paper forms the blog Turbine 42/38 Lower Stones SD 96638 33136 ///prank.degrading.donation, the 35th in the series.
Systemic carelessness: September 2023-February 2025
Since September 2023, Calderdale Wind Farm Ltd (CWF Ltd) have been advancing proposals to build England’s largest wind farm on Walshaw Moor, which is internationally designated as a Special Area of Conservation for its blanket bog and deep peat, and as a Special Protection Area for the red-listed birds it supports: merlins, golden plovers, lapwings, and curlews. These birds breed and flourish on Walshaw Moor where elsewhere they have become extinct. It is not unusual to spend a day on the high ground of Yorkshire Dales National Park without hearing, let alone seeing, a lapwing or curlew. On Walshaw Moor, these charismatic birds are omnipresent in their breeding season.
The first version of the wind farm (CWF) had a layout of 65 turbine sites and a power of up to 302 MW. CWF was promoted on a website from September 2023 to October 2024, and a scoping report by Natural Power was published.
From September 2023 to October 2024, CWF was dogged by management incompetence that went beyond “systemic carelessness”. Examples of incompetence included a statement that CWF was “accepted to connect” at Padiham substation when CWF’s own entry in the embedded capacity register of Electricity Northwest said that it was accepted to connect at more distant Rochdale. The website also said that the National Grid runs at 440 Kelvin Volts when it is in fact 400 kilovolts. Both these statements went uncorrected for over a year until MacKinnon pointed them out. CWF was withdrawn a month later and the CWF website was stripped back to a single page. The pattern of management incompetence of CWF Ltd in the period September 2023 – February 2025 is laid out by MacKinnon in the series Walshaw Turbines.
Systemic carelessness: a new start
A new Project Director, Christian Egal, joined CWF Ltd in February 2025. He launched Calderdale Energy Park (CEP) on 29 April 2025 and opened a six-week period of public consultation. CEP has 41 turbine sites and is rated at up to 300 MW. The public has not been informed of turbine size, so logically we can only divide 300 MW by 41 to get 7.3 MW per turbine. The two common onshore turbines of this power are made by Siemens and Vestas, with blade lengths of 85 metres and a rotor diameter of 170 metres. We shall use those figures in our analysis. Systemic carelessness in the CEP proposal became public knowledge on 29 April 2025, because all the maps provided for the public consultation had a turbine T42, but there are only 41 turbines.
Systemic carelessness: the incomplete peat survey
The most long-standing source of the systemic carelessness that we shall show riddles CEP like dry rot, is the failure to complete the peat survey in 2022.
The deep peat on Walshaw is a very important aspect in the design of CEP. In February 2025, Christian Egal inherited from the collapsed CWF project a peat depth map and data that had been left incomplete since the probing was done by consultants TNEI in 2022. The behaviour of CWF Ltd with respect to their own map is bewildering because it could have been completed in a single day.
The immediate reason that the proposal began to unravel in public for Christian Egal on 29 April 2025 is that the peat survey was not completed between his taking up his appointment in February 2025 and the start of nesting by protected curlews, plovers, and lapwings. MacKinnon estimates that the survey and map could have been completed with ten hours of fieldwork and a few minutes of computer time.
Figure 1 shows the peat survey that was used in the construction of the CEP layout and published for the public consultation on 29 April 2025. The two most egregious errors in this map are the responsibility of the new Project Director and we shall come to them later. The blank area in the map highlighted in Figure 2 is a persistent and systemic error stemming from the period of CWF Ltd incompetence in 2023-2024, described earlier.
The cause of the blank area is that the 2022 peat probing was not completed. The entirety of the site should have been probed on a 100-metre grid and the depths interpolated using an algorithm (Kriging) that will not show depths if the data is insufficient. The frankness of the Kriging algorithm has been exemplary. Figure 3 shows a detail of the 2023 peat map, which showed the probing positions, with the probing failure visible in absent crosses around the blank area.
The incomplete peat map was used by the consultant team and the Project Director to guide the turbine layout of CEP. The peat map was the most important document in designing the layout.
The position of the blank area is significant for the analysis of heightened flood risk caused by CEP. The slope drains into Greave Clough where it is intercepted by the Greave Clough sluice. This diverts the rainfall in the catchment to Widdop reservoir through a tunnel and is shown in Figure 4 (Photo by Nigel Griffiths 4 October 2024).
The tunnel can be overwhelmed in a storm, and the runoff then goes over the sluice and directly to Hebden Bridge via Graining Water. If Widdop Reservoir is full, then the intercepted runoff goes down the Widdop dam spillway and reaches Hebden Bridge by a longer route. CWF Ltd must prove that CEP will not increase the flood risk to Hebden Bridge, which has been frequently and catastrophically flooded in recent years. Public consultation must not begin while the peat map is incomplete in this crucial area and the public can have no confidence in any statements about hydrology and flooding made during the public consultation by any representative of CEP.. Although the blank area is small, its position in hydrology is important. Even so, this does not fully explain the way the management of CEP reacted on discovering the implications of the blank area for their layout launch.
The Peat Depth Map published on 29 April 2025 for public consultation has reference numbers at the bottom right (Figure 5).
MacKinnon has rung Natural Power where the receptionist, Emma, was very helpful indeed. She did not recognise JWO or LF as employees on the Castle Douglas site, and they are not listed as on-site staff. She spoke to James Lightbody who had had some connection with the CEP project but was no longer working on it.
As far as can be understood at the time of writing, JWO and LF faithfully transferred to the maps the layout spreadsheet that CEP and Christian Egal has decided. We see that the map has a reference number, and the meaning of the elements can be determined from the range of maps that CEP published for public consultation between 29 April and 1 May 2025. GB211043 determines the project; M_019 determines which kind of map (there are at least seven kinds) in this case Peat Depths, and A refers to where in the sequence of updates the map lies. Letter A means this is the first peat depth map prepared of the layout.
The layout is specified as 210225_41t_A. The layout passed to the cartographer is a spreadsheet of turbine site names T1, T2, …, T42 each with a six figure grid reference.
The layout number can easily be decoded. The layout 210225 was made on 21 February 2025; 41t means it had 41 turbines and A means it was the first in a sequence of layout updates.
Systemic carelessness: the T42/T38 error
We now turn to the most revealing errors in the maps published by CEP. These errors will lay bare the systemic carelessness of the CEP design process.
Figure 6 shows the layout map published on 29 April 2025 with red highlights added by MacKinnon.
CEP has 41 turbine sites, but the layout published on 29 April 2025 has a T42 (highlighted) and there is no T38. The dashed arrows on Figure 6 show how the turbines are sequentially numbered in batches. This sequential numbering allows a kind of analysis pioneered by British mathematicians in WW2 and often called the German Tank Problem. It is common to scramble such data to defeat this kind of analysis. The CWF layout map had lightly scrambled numbering, so MacKinnon could not use sequential analysis to discover track routes and dummy turbines in the CWF layout. The CEP layout is numbered in a very orderly fashion.
MacKinnon rang the contact number (getting Oliver of Cavendish Consulting) and emailed CEP at 9.04 on 1 May 2025 to ask about T42 and T38. At 10.30 on the same day this statement of error (Figure 7) was posted on the CEP website. MacKinnon was later thanked by Christian Egal for pointing out all the egregious errors in the seven maps.
This pop-up admission shows that the T42-T38 error was systemic at CEP. None of the company’s experts in layout aerodynamics, hydrology, peat geology, habitat, ecology, public access, or cultural heritage noticed the T38-T42 error. This shows that the CEP layout design process was systemically careless. The layout 210225_41t_A was finalised as a spreadsheet of turbine locations and six figure grid references that could be given to the cartographers.
As is often the case, if full and frank admission of error is not made, the outcome spirals. When MacKinnon read the 10.30 a.m. correction pop-up it seemed to him that “The location of T38 has not been changed” was an odd thing to assert. When he emailed CEP to inform them of the error, T38 had no position. MacKinnon had been told that nobody else had pointed out the T38-T42 error.
Why was CEP now explicitly denying that the position of T38 had changed? Had it been changed? The book of Proverbs says, and rightly: “The wicked flee when no man pursueth.”
Further analysis by MacKinnon, using the sequential diagram in Figure 6 soon showed that the position of T38 had almost certainly been changed. (Figure 8). The sequential numbering meant that T38 was once between T37 and T39. The spreadsheet of turbine locations had 42 rows and T38 was deleted from the spreadsheet leaving T42 in the 41st row of the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet was faithfully turned into seven maps by JWO and the work checked by LF, contractors to Natural Power, in the seven maps dated 14-03-25 and designated A in the sequence.
When MacKinnon rang CEP about the T38-T42 error, the Project Director realised that the wrong maps in the sequence had been published. Correct maps had been given to him, dated 17-04-25 (layout) and 18-04-25 (other six) (Figure 9) and these were the maps that should have been used at the launch. With hallmark systemic carelessness, the wrong maps were loaded onto the website between 18 April and the launch on 29 April 2025 and further systemic carelessness meant that nobody had checked that the correct maps had been loaded until they were given to the public for consultation.
Systemic carelessness: the T38-T42 error was caused by the failure to complete the peat survey
The reason for the deletion of T38 from the layout seems to be that it was right in the middle of the blank area of the peat map (Figure 10). When this was realised, T38 was deleted from the layout spreadsheet of 22 February 2025 and maps created and checked from the spreadsheet on 14 March 2025. No credible alternative explanation for the presence of T42 and absence of T38 in the layout has been offered by CEP.
The 18-month-long negligence of CWF Ltd in not completing the peat survey above Greave Clough sluice, a process that would have cost only £2000 or 0.0004% of the £500 million budget and would have taken a single day of fieldwork, has put their new Project Director at an immediate disadvantage in his post. The turbine layout of CEP was changed because somebody noticed that T38 was advertising the omissions of the peat survey in a crucial area above the Greave Clough sluice. Because the layout was finalised on Saturday 22 February 2025, there was plenty of time to fill the blank in the peat survey. It would only have taken a single day (and indeed only a few hours with a larger team) and could have been done on Monday 24 – Friday 28 February without straying into the nesting season which began on Saturday 1 March 2025. The weather in this period was exceptionally good for the work. Rather than doing the job properly, a chain of events began which caused the project launch to unravel and quantified some of the systemic carelessness of the CWF Ltd management, which now includes Project Director Christian Egal.
The uncorrected error in the 2022 survey which led to the blank area in the 2023 and 2025 maps caused the late deletion of T38. The wrong layout spreadsheet was given to the cartographers who prepared and checked a faithful representation of the wrong spreadsheet. The error was noticed, the spreadsheet was corrected and another set of maps were prepared and checked on 18 April 2025 but the correct maps were not loaded to the website before the launch of CEP for public consultation on 29 April 2025. MacKinnon’s question about T42 caused CWF Ltd to deny that T38 had ever moved, and this unexpected denial caused MacKinnon to analyse the sequences and discover that T38 had been on the blank section. The map references then allowed MacKinnon to discover the carelessness with the spreadsheet of turbine locations and the carelessness with the loading and publishing of seven wrong maps. CEP have not offered a credible alternative explanation.
This is the way systemic carelessness spreads like dry rot, but systemic carelessness was not limited to the T38-T42 error. It is intrinsic to the whole design of CEP which has not been subject to a proper design process.
Systemic carelessness: the peat survey key is wrong
We now turn back to the peat map published on 29 April 2025 and look at the key (Figure 11)
The key has a gap between 0.4 and 0.5 metres. This is a mistake of long gestation and began with a cardinal error by CWF Ltd in the 2023 Scoping Report. The definition of deep peat depth in England is 0.4 m or more; in Scotland it is 0.5 m or more. The CEP consultants Natural Power are based in Dumfries & Galloway, and used 0.5 m as the defining depth on the 2023 peat map. It was careless of CWF Ltd not to notice that their Scottish consultants had not used the English definition of deep peat. (Figure 12).
It has become an international imperative to conserve deep peat and sustain active blanket bog. On 31 March 2025 the Nature Minister, Mary Creagh, said:
“Our peatlands are this country’s Amazon rainforest – home to our most precious wildlife, storing carbon and reducing flooding risk.
The UK has 13% of the world’s blanket bog. A rare global habitat, it is a precious part of our national heritage, and that is why we‘re announcing a consultation on these measures to ensure deep peat is better protected.
These changes will benefit communities by improving air and water quality, and protect homes and businesses from flood damage, which supports economic stability and security under our Plan for Change.
If implemented, these changes will increase the area currently protected from 222,000 to more than 368,000 hectares of England’s total 677,250 hectares of deep peat, meaning an area equivalent to the size of Greater London, Greater Manchester and West Midlands put together will now be better protected.
The definition of deep peat will be revised, so that deep peat is counted as anything over 30 cms rather than 40 cms. The entire area of upland deep peat that is potentially subject to burning will be protected.
This approach is being supported by evidence provided by Natural England. Any prescribed burning would need to be done under strict licence, issued where there is a clear need, for example to reduce wildfire risk.
The move comes as part of wider government plans to support nature recovery and clean up the air for our health, wellbeing, and the environment.”
The 2022 TNEI peat data was recycled by Natural Power to create the 2025 peat map with a deep-peat definition of 0.4 m. The slight changes between the 2023 and 2025 maps are caused by the algorithm being asked to calculate this 0.4 m contour. MacKinnon and others can prove that the 2022 TNEI data is full of errors.
After the Kriging algorithm had been used, Natural Power got the peat depth key wrong; the error was presumably signed off by the Project Director and published on 29 April 2025. MacKinnon informed CEP of this second error at 9.04 on 1 May and by 2 May it had been corrected, and the consequences minimised as shown in Figure 13.
Systemic carelessness: when errors are pointed out CEP makes further errors
Again, we see how systemic carelessness generates further errors. CEP say “Further peat survey work is ongoing.” This should not be so because highly protected Walshaw Moor is currently home to large numbers of endangered, breeding, ground-nesting birds, such as curlews, skylarks, and lapwings – indeed many of those species will currently be incubating eggs and if disturbed may abandon nesting for this season. Figure 14 shows a huge flock of curlews photographed over Walshaw Moor on 29 March 2025.
“Ongoing peat work” would therefore be damaging to the conservation interest for which this site is designated. No peat work should be done until the chicks have fledged and left the moor for wintering grounds, this requires a delay until mid-August and is the price that CEP should pay for not doing this work earlier when the risk to wildlife would have been negligible. Then the blank area on the peat map can finally be filled as it should have been long before the public consultation was launched. Fieldwork in this area in the middle of the breeding season is potentially a plan or project which would require permission from Natural England and we have informed them of the possibility of such work going ahead in an SPA.
“The map represents a worst case scenario.” On 29 April 2025, the public who are being consulted thought that the CEP peat map was a representation of the depth of peat inside the boundary of the proposal. On 1 May the public were told instead that the peat survey was not a “map” that might allow them to comment, but a “worst case scenario”. We have not even been told in what direction the axis “bad scenario-worse scenario-worst scenario” goes. Is “worst” the worst-case scenario for the curlews or the worst-case scenario for the developers?
The cardinal error in 2023 to use a Scottish definition of deep peat led to the error in the key of the 2025 CEP map. This led to a misleading statement (“ongoing” peat survey) and a startling admission about the scientific status of what had formerly been understood to be a map. Again, we see the dry rot creep of systemic carelessness at CWF Ltd, already undermining the performance of the new Project Director.
When is a map not a map? This is intolerable arrogance in a public consultation.
Systemic carelessness: the T21 cluster
We have demonstrated haste and carelessness in the layout design process for CEP. The layout inevitably has many serious intrinsic faults.
The problems with T21, T22, T23 and T24 (which we call the “T21 cluster”) will serve to illustrate further CEP systemic carelessness by a wide range of consultants. The appearance of the T21 cluster on the corrected 1 May layout is shown in Figure 15.
T21 is too close to the Pennine Way, T22 is down a very steep edge in Black Clough and the four turbines are too close together. The consultants in question are those responsible for Access, Civil Engineering and Aerodynamics. The cluster is further strong evidence that the layout published on 29 April 2025 and corrected on 1 May 2025 was not the result of a considered design process. Figure 16 quantifies the problems of the T21 cluster with respect to the Pennine Way and Dean Stones Edge.
HGVs would have to deliver huge pylon sections and a massive 7.3 MW nacelle by an aggregate track down Dean Stones Edge to T22. Reputable wind farms on Pennine terrain (Scout Moor for example) have a spine track at less than 9%, with short stretches of 12% on downhill spurs. We conclude that T22 is inaccessible by normal standards and that the layout was not checked by civil engineering consultants before publication.
T21 is about 60 metres from the Pennine Way. The blades of a 7.3 MW turbine are 85 metres long and would oversail this national trail. Surely the consultant in charge of the Access map (detail Figure 16) should have strongly advised against the position of T21 had there been a proper design process. They would further have advised a setback of at least the “topple distance” of T21, and given the iconic nature of the national trail, celebrating its Diamond Jubilee in 2025, might then have indicated even greater setback. Whoever authorised the Access map at CWF Ltd must have decided that T21 is a suitable way to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of the Pennine Way, a sinuous institution of British democracy. It was the brainchild of Tom Stephenson, who wrote an article in the Daily Herald in 1935.
Wanted: a long green trail. When two American girls wrote asking advice about a tramping holiday in England, I wondered what they would think of our island, particularly of the restrictions placed in the way of those who wished to see some of our most captivating scenery. If, at the end of their tour, these visitors from across the Atlantic are over-loud in their praises of their native “Land of Liberty,” who shall blame them? They mention their acquaintance with the Appalachian Trail, a footpath that runs for 2,000 miles through the Eastern States from Maine to Georgia, established by tramping, mountaineering and other open-air organisations, and generously aided by the Government and State authorities. Now this path has been eclipsed by the John Muir Trail which reaches from the Canadian border through Washington, Oregon, and California to Mexico. For 2,500 miles without any slogging on hard roads, one may follow this track over lofty peaks, by deep-cleft canyons and through great National Parks and reserves saved for all time from spoilation by unplanned and irresponsible building. After allowing for difference in geographical scale, what can we in England offer to compare with these enterprises?
It took Stephenson 30 years to get the Pennine Way on the map, and he walked it as a 72-year-old. If the CEP layout passes, his grandchildren will pass under the rotating blades of T21. We see again, perhaps here with the greatest clarity, the systemic carelessness of the design process for the CEP layout.
Now we consider the aerodynamics of the T21 cluster. A wake of slow turbulent air forms behind a wind turbine. The usual turbine spacing in the direction of the prevailing wind (SW on Walshaw Moor) is 7 rotor diameters (7 RD) to allow the wake to diminish. The usual spacing perpendicular to the prevailing wind is 3 RD. (Figure 18)
As can be seen in Figure 19 below, the T21 cluster is much too close together in the upwind direction, with spacings of only 2.9 and 2.4 RD. CEP were informed of MacKinnon’s analysis of the T21 cluster on 2 May 2025 and have not denied any of his observations. The point again is that the layout was not the result of a proper design process.
Systemic carelessness: the hydrology map is wrong for Greave Clough
The hydrology map (Figure 20) incorrectly shows the Greave Clough catchment draining only to Hebden Bridge, when in fact most of the normal runoff goes into a tunnel at the sluice and underground to Widdop reservoir. The Project Director has admitted that the hydrology map published on 29 April 2025 had incorrect turbine site labels, which means that it cannot have been scrutinized by the project hydrologist before publication.
We conclude that the hydrology team approved their map for public consultation without reference to a correct turbine layout, without a complete peat map, without effective consultation with Yorkshire Water and without a site visit to Greave Clough sluice and Widdop tunnel portal.
Systemic carelessness: the CWF layout evolved into the CEP layout without attention to the huge increase in power of the turbines from 4.6 MW to 7.3 MW.
It is striking to compare the layout of CWF (65 turbines of 4.6 MW with rotor diameter 130 metres) with the CEP layout (41 turbines of 7.3 MW with a rotor diameter 170 metres). There is a 30% increase in RD which should be reflected in an increase in the spacings between turbines.
The turbines along the NW boundary (lie along the prevailing SW wind but are closer together at 7.3 MW then they were at 4.6 MW. In particular in the CEP layout T6 is very close upwind to T5 at Dove Stones and closer than it was before the turbine power was uprated. The distance between T5 and T6 in the CEP layout is 3.5 RD when 7 RD is the usual upwind spacing. The distance between the corresponding T58 and T9 in the CWF layout is greater, and much greater at 4.8 RD because the blades are shorter. There are many other problems with upwind spacing in the CEP layout. We conclude that the CEP layout has not allowed for the 60% increase in turbine power and 30% increase in rotor diameter and this carelessness is systemic across the whole layout.
Systemic carelessness: the failure to make effective site visits
The pattern of management incompetence (until February 2025) and systemic carelessness (February 2025-date) at CWF Ltd would have been controlled by effective site visits. Walshaw Moor is complex, but sufficient knowledge could have been gained in a programme of ten half-day site visits, mostly on foot to make them effective, at a cost of perhaps £10000 in billable time. Had effective site visits taken place during the period of management incompetence, effective questions might have been asked, and the Scoping Report of 2023 would have been less of a laughing stock.
“What is that ruin that is not on our Cultural Heritage map, and who are all those people heading there?”
“It is Wuthering Heights, and the people come from all over the world.”
“Why are the tracks grey, but the rock brown?”
“The onsite rock is too weak and porous to make a roadstone strong enough to support a Land Rover.”
“Why is so little water flowing under this bridge?”
“The water is intercepted by a sluice and tunnel. We shall look into the sluice in fifteen minutes. I warn you that it is terrifying.”
The failure to make effective site visits during the period of management incompetence persists into the present period of systemic carelessness since February 2025. The following conversation did not happen during a Christian Egal’s site visit to Dove Stones, the most fascinating place on a site that is full of interest. (Figure 19. Photo: Ali West)
“This is an interesting place. What is it called and what are those beautiful birds?”
“Dove Stones, the site of T5. They are over-wintering golden plovers. They do better here than almost anywhere else in the north of England or Scotland.”
“This is lovely…very lovely indeed. The campaigners will bring the cameras here. Look! It is much too close to T6. That spacing is only 3 or 4 RD. Cross it off!”
The layout of Calderdale Energy Park would be very different had the Project Director made effective visits to his complex site. That said, after 10 effective site visits, the ecological fascination of Walshaw Moor would become an insuperable problem for any sensitive person like Christian Egal who was leading a project with the potential to inflict (in Natural Power’s own words) “long term, international and irreversible” habitat loss and degradation.
Systemic carelessness: conclusion
A pattern of systemic carelessness in the proposal for CEP has been described. No credible alternative explanations have been given and none of MacKinnon’s facts have been contested. The public consultation should be postponed so that the public can be furnished with accurate and well considered documents that cannot be retrospectively dismissed as “worst case scenarios” or containing only “typographical errors.”
During postponement, the Project Director can have the peat survey completed, send a consultant to assess the drainage in Greave Clough, liaise with the expertise at Yorkshire Water and engage with the local experts, who understand the terrain, habitats, and wildlife. He can also try to purge CWF Ltd of the systemic carelessness we have demonstrated, which we have shown has already begun to affect his own performance, even though he is a highly experienced manager. Given the tangled web stemming from the period of management incompetence into the period of systemic carelessness, a postponement of six months would be too short to allow the Project Director to get a grip and the public to do the necessary field work and research to check the documents.
The deep problems for CEP on Walshaw Moor are that the site is a Special Protection Area for red-listed birds, a Special Area of Conservation for peat and acid grassland habitats, a carbon reservoir, and is integral to England’s response to the Kunming-Montreal 30 by 30 target. Government and investors, the Planning Inspectorate and electricity billpayers, and the coalition of people who care about nature will ask how CEP can be let loose on Walshaw Moor when they are so careless about such simple details.
The public consultation must be postponed for a period of not less than six months.
Nick MacKinnon 5 May 2025
Given to Project Director Christian Egal on 6 May 2025 for comment.
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This is the 35th in a series of guest blogs originally based on the 65 wind turbines which Richard Bannister planned to have erected on Walshaw Moor. Turbines 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17, 21, 25, 27, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 40, 42, 43, 44, 47, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 60, 62, 64 and 65 have already been described.
This blog marks a change of plan of attack by the developers who have canned their original 65 wind turbines, quite possibly in response to the public humiliation of having their so-called ‘plan’ publicy shown to be damaging, irrational and probably unlawful. They have come back with a plan for 42 wind turbines and the amazing Nick MacKinnon and friends have already regrouped and set off on a new tack too. The series continues.
To see all the blogs – click here.
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