Scottish Legal News: RSPB wins legal challenge to put four Scottish wind farms on hold

A bird conservation charity has successfully challenged plans to develop four offshore wind farms in the Firth of Forth and Firth of Tay. A judge in the Court of Session ruled that the decisions by the Scottish Ministers to grant consent for the construction of the marine electricity generating projects were “unlawful”, after the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) challenged the decisions by way of four separate petitions for judicial review. 

Lord Stewart heard that the proposed wind farms of Inch Cape, Seagreen Alpha, Seagreen Bravo and Neart na Gaoith planned to develop a combined 335 turbines with the capacity to generate up to 2.3GW of green electricity, but RSPB raised concerns about the impact on migratory wild bird species and their protected habitat population, including Atlantic puffins, northern gannets and black-legged kittiwakes, as well as guillemots and razorbills.

The judge held that the Scottish Ministers had failed to comply with their obligations under the Electricity Works (Environmental Impact Assessment) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations, in that they had failed to consult on environmental information about the projects and made their decision “unlawfully” taking account of unconsulted-on information. He also held that the “appropriate assessment”, a prerequisite of the Electricity Act 1989 section 36 consent decision, was flawed in that it applied the “wrong test” in relation to ornithological risk.   Click here to read more