COUNCILLORS are being recommended to reject a renewed planning application for a wind farm on the Weston Hills. North Herts District Council s planning and control committee members will discuss the new application by John Cherry for three turbines clos

COUNCILLORS are being recommended to reject a renewed planning application for a wind farm on the Weston Hills.

North Herts District Council's planning and control committee members will discuss the new application by John Cherry for three turbines close to Hatch Lane, Weston, when they meet next Thursday.

In the report responses from local people have been 95 per cent against the project and in the district the figure is 70 per cent.

The owners of Rush Green Airfield and Graveley Airfield have also objected saying the turbines would be too close to the approach path to both airfields.

Other objections have also come from the British Microlight Association, the Light Aircraft Association, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, Hertfordshire Biological Records Centre, Herts and Middlesex Bat Group, The Council for the Protection of Rural England, and Weston, Clothall and Therfield parish councils.

Other objectors include the Baldock Museum and Local History Society, the Baldock Society as well as St John's Primary School, Baldock.

Recommending the planning application be refused, the planning officer says in his report: "The application lies within the Metropolitan Green Belt. Inappropriate development such as that proposed will not be supported save in the presence of very special circumstances.

"No very special circumstances, which clearly outweigh the harm, which could be caused to the openness of the Green Belt, have been advanced in this case.

"It would also likely to have a material harmful impact on the safe operations of both Graveley and Rush Green airfields and have a significant affect on the Weston Conservation Area.