While local people are concerned about the potential  impact of the Sizewell C building works on our local community, few have yet recognised the likely grave impact  on Woodbridgeof proposed  large-scale onshore cabling works   from the off-shore windfarm .

This is perhaps not surprising: I was only alerted a couple of days before the  consultation ended that the proposed cabling route would enter the Woodbridge division, when i was first shown a map of the route – and I had to tell SCC officers this impacted on us, rather than the other way round!

The proposal is for buried cabling – which many consider more aesthetic than  pylons, but which will be cutting a 55metre-wide swathe across a significant distance of unspoiled Suffolk coastal countryside:  from Bawdsey, across the Deben estuary, travelling north past  Newbourne, Waldringfield, tunnelling under Martlesham creek, and turning west  on our very own Sandy Lane, where there will be a ‘Primary construction consolidation site’ whatever that might be.

My response as your local County Councillor to the preliminary consultation is below:

“Although I recognise it is a need for aesthetic sensitivity that has driven the planning of onshore delivery of underground cabling for the EAONE windfarm, we also need to recognise fully that the proposed underground cabling will cut a swathe 55mtres wide through the countryside for most of the distance between Bawdsey and Bramford. This will have a terrible impact on ancient trees (particularly, as East Anglia ONE acknowledges, in Newbourne and Martlesham) and we have been told there can be no tree replanting over the top.

It may be  therefore, that this will have a greater impact on portions of the route than pylons. We know of no pylon that is more than a few decades old – yet many of the trees that will have to go will have lived for centuries.

The planned works will take place over a couple of years, from, I believe, 2015. During this time there will be a considerable impact both on– and off-road. I’m not talking only of the valued footpath infrastructure, but the fact that these works will cross-over with the proposed Sizewell C building – and the proposed housing development at Martlesham. This will be rather a triple whammy for our section of Suffolk Coastal.

Responding on behalf of the people of Woodbridge as a whole I would like to say that we do understand that the need for this cabling is for the greater good of the population of the UK – but we need you to understand that we  need adequate and appropriate mitigation (to put it mildly) of the disruption – with all longterm negative impacts to the beauty of our timeless landscape prevented as much as humanly possible.

I am yet to be convinced of good reasons as to why the cables cannot be in the estuary – or on the waterline – for much of the distance to Bramford as was originally proposed.

My underlying feeling is that we along the Deben estuary should not be bearing the brunt of development for the good of the nation as a whole, without scheme recognising the full importance of this – and putting time and effort into ensuring minimum impact, and compensating us adequately for what impact there has to be on the environment!”