A training event, to help planners assess landscape issues in relation to renewable and Low carbon Energy Proposals is to be funded through the Climate Change Skills Fund and will be held at Hambleton District Council on 26th June 2012 from 10am – 4pm.

A number of other studies have been completed in the North Yorkshire and York sub-region that help to provide certainty around the potential to deliver Renewable and Low-Carbon Energy (RLCE). These are:

• Delivering Sustainable Energy in North Yorkshire: Recommended Planning Guidance (Land Use Consultants, 2005)
• Renewable energy studies for Harrogate (Aecom) and City of York (AEA), both from 2010
• Yorkshire and Humber Renewable and Low Carbon Energy Potential Study (Aecom, 2011)

One of the key considerations when balancing these studies against other competing objectives is the impact that RLCE may have on the landscape and biodiversity resource within North Yorkshire and York. The area has huge environmental assets including 2 National Parks as well as Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

To help local authorities translate these documents into their Local Development Frameworks (LDFs) and to help them realise the RLCE potential identified and balance need and demand against landscape sensitivity a report was commissioned to provide a Framework Tool to help planners assess positively RLCE potential whilst considering landscape and biodiversity impacts in a pragmatic and pro-active manner.

The, soon to be published, document; Managing Landscape Change: Renewable & Low Carbon Energy Developments – A Landscape Sensitivity Frame for North Yorkshire and York (Aecom, 2012) guides planners through the process, using tools from landscape architecture together with the relevant reports.

A training event, funded through the Climate Change Skills Fund will be held at Hambleton District Council he 26th June 2012 from 10am – 4pm to take local authority planners through the framework and the tools.

In presentations and workshop exercises they will be introduced to the relevant studies, key findings of the studies highlighted, and they will be showen how to take the information and apply it to designing policy and assessing proposals for R&LCE.

For more information contact Ruth Hardingham via email Ruth.Hardingham@lgyh.gov.uk.