IN reply to the comments of A Culverhouse about planning applications for wind farms (Letters, October 28), the statement in the draft local plan is an expectation, not a statutory requirement.

We cannot compel applicants to carry out a full consultation before they make an application, but it is in their best interests to do so sooner rather than later.

If Mr Culverhouse has access to the draft local plan, he knows that the statement is not policy: it is not in heavy type.

At the moment, we have no definite proposals on which a consultation over the idea for a wind farm on Darwen moors could take place - no precise number of masts, no precise locations for them, no details of how power is to be conducted away from the site, no indication of how construction traffic would gain access to the site.

In other words, any consultation at this stage would only be a token. Objectors like himself would then complain that they were being given half a story and did not have sufficient information on which to base a sound argument. A reading of the whole section on wind farms in the draft local plan shows that the council is aware of the problems. It is also aware of the balance that has to be made between the advantages of sustainable power generation and the loss of amenity that might result from the construction of a wind farm.

The council has shown itself conscious of the issues and will give full and impartial consideration to an application when one is made.

The fact that the area proposed for a wind farm forms part of a biological heritage site is recorded on the proposals map for the local plan and this will be taken fully into account when dealing with any planning application.

That does not mean, as Mr Culverhouse asserts, though, that the ecosystem would be destroyed by a wind farm. We would have to await the outcome of an environmental impact assessment, carried out as part of the application process, before knowing the answer to that question.

It is conceivable that the applicants could put in measures to compensate for damage to the habitat, if indeed that proved to be the case. In the meantime, claims about the ecosystem being destroyed are premature.

COUN FRANK CONNOR (Chair of Planning, Blackburn with Darwen Council), Duxbury Street, Darwen.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.