ruling the waves: Planning restrictions extended into North Sea

PLANNING regulations are being introduced for vast tracts of open sea off the Yorkshire coast to control major developments including the introduction of multi-billion pound off-shore wind farms.

The seas from Flamborough Head in the East Riding of Yorkshire south to Felixstowe in Suffolk will be controlled as marine plan areas from next April to try to manage industries worth 47bn a year to the economy.

As well as being a busy shipping area, Yorkshire’s East Coast is dredged for aggregates, used for gas storage and extensively fished.

In future, it will be home to many hundreds of offshore wind turbines, increasing the number of potentially competing interests.

The plans will dictate the best route for a pipeline or where turbines should be sited.

The Marine Management Organisation’s head of marine planning, Steve Brooker, said: “The East Coast is already quite a busy place and it’s going to become busier in the future and that’s why we decided to go there first. We know on the East Coast of England there’s an awful lot of shipping and that’s likely to increase. We need to work out how that can happen alongside lots of wind farms and making sure commercial fisheries don’t get disrupted.”

Earlier this year, the Government announced plans for a massive expansion of off-shore energy production around the UK coast, including a vast wind farm near Hornsea.

The area set aside for this is equivalent to the width of the UK from Liverpool to Hull and lies between 21 miles and 118 miles off the Yorkshire coast.

The Yorkshire Post is campaigning for the huge new construction and service industry supplying the wind farms to be located in the region, at port locations along the Humber and the coast.

However, East Coast fishermen have claimed they were ignored about siting so many turbines within a prime shellfish area.

Mr Brooker said: “We genuinely want to speak to all people with a stake in the sea and that includes commercial fishermen. It’s going to be the equivalent for the marine environment of a local development framework which are plans that decide where houses are built and where schools are built.”