Smaller Ports: Whitby and Scarborough hope to see boats come in

WHILE sites along the Humber potentially have the most to gain from Britain's ambitious wind power plans, the future of some of Yorkshire's smaller coastal ports could also be transformed by the construction of vast wind farms out in the North Sea.

Planners in North Yorkshire believe the slow decline of east coast ports such as Whitby and Scarborough could be arrested if they were to become major hubs for servicing and maintaining the army of wind turbines located less than 100 miles offshore.

Scarborough Borough Council will this summer hold the first in a series of events promoting the ports to companies set to be involved in maintaining the planned 1,800-turbine wind farm at Dogger Bank, which will be the largest of its type in the world.

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While planners there accept the turbines are likely to be built at larger port sites along the Humber or in the north east, they believe Whitby and Scarborough's locations as the closest ports to the wind farm sites could see them providing berthing facilities to maintenance vessels for generations to come.

The council's head of technical services John Riby said: "This could be massive for these ports. The fact is they have declined in terms of commercial cargo, and while fishing is hanging in there I think everybody feels some sort of diversification is required. We do have facilities which could be used, not so much for manufacturing the turbines but for servicing them. In Whitby in particular there's an excellent site at Endeavour Wharf where the old cargo shed used to be which could provide an ideal location for maintenance facilities."

A report to the council's ruling cabinet in March put forward a new marketing plan for the ports in a bid to give their bid the best chance of success.

"We are going to be proactive about this," Mr Riby said. "What we need to do is get ourselves a profile and get the supply chain involved – the engineering companies, the training providers and so on which will soon be aligning themselves to key locations. We want to make sure this happens in North Yorkshire – and not just up on Teesside or along the Humber."