What's the story?
It all started back in October 2023...
...when Helen Cooper started a Facebook group to raise awareness of the White Cross floating offshore wind farm planning application. We're based in Braunton, North Devon, and are still primarily Facebook - based The cable route would go through highly designated areas including Saunton Beach, the beach car park, under the world famous Saunton Golf Club, behind Braunton Burrows Special Area of Conservation, through the historic Braunton Marsh, under the SSSI Taw Estuary to a new electricity substation in East Yelland.
The community wasn't and still isn't, against the windfarm or the cable itself, just the route.
We are pro renewables.
We have rasied awareness and our petition has over 3,800 signatures on it.
There are also 1,865 objections on the local councils website to this proposal.
The many objections raised have been focused mainly on the environmental damage the community fears will come from the installation of the cables, the loss of tourism (who wants to visit a building site?), and resulting economic impact, concerns over construction traffic and increased pollution. Also access to the beach itself, as the equipment and vehicles would use the narrow approach road into Saunton Beach, and the slipway onto the beach.
The developers say the beach would not be closed, but how can it be kept open to beach users with a cable plough laying a 132KV cable (or 2) through the sand?
For reasons which are unclear to us, White Cross have been allowed to use something called The Rochdale Envelope which is a way they can apply for planning permission without giving complete details of their plans.
This is why we don't even know the number of cables they might lay.
#CONSERVATIONNOTEXPLOITATION
Aren't you just NIMBYS?
Name calling isn't cool.
We don't do it to others so naturally don't like it when it's done to us.
We believe there should be a co-ordinated route-to-shore strategy for all the other big wind farms that are planned for the South West, coming behind White Cross, so that lots of other communites don't face the sort of struggle we are currently having.
We feel there's been a real lack of consideration for our community and don't want the way we've been treated to happen to other communities. Fairness, transparency and trust having been lacking in both the application, and the way in which White Cross has engaged with local people.
We want conservation not exploitation of our natural environment.
If you click on the 'Friends in Need' link on our home page, you'll see how much threat the communites on the East coast are under from wind farm electricity cables
This could well be the South West in the next few years - the ambition for Floating Offshore Wind (FLOW) is absolutely huge with wind farms planned as deep as they can go - which is to the limit of the Continental shelf.
So where are we in the process?
Unfortunately the local planning authority (North Devon District Council) voted in favour of the cable route application at it's meeting on 7th May 2025.
Which is not the result we wanted
However this decision is able to be challenged.
This is a developing story, so check back, or follow us on Facebook.
And remember - it's not over till the fat lady sings!
Cable Route
The Black line is the cable route. The purple line is Braunton Burrows Special Area of Conservation (SAC)
As you can see from this picture, taken from the Habitats Regulation Assessment (an important legal document which is integral to the planning process), the cable route will go through the SAC or touch it, in many places.
At times it will be 40m away from it.
At times it will be 5m away from it.
At some points there will be no distance between the SAC and the cable route.
THE RIGHTS OF NATURE
'Give me a lever a
and a fulcrum and I can move the earth'*
THE FIRST RIGHTS OF NATURE CASE WON IN THE UK
In February 2025, the River Ouse had it's inherent rights acknowledged by Lewes District Council.
In a 'Charter for the Rights for the River Ouse', the first of it's kind in the U.K.
The Charter recognises the right of the river to exist in a natural state.
You may wonder 'How would that work in reality? Isn't that a bit leftfield?'
But if you stop and think about it, companies have legal enitites, protections, and rights, so why not Nature?
COULD SAUNTON GAIN THESE RIGHTS?
The 'RIghts of Nature' is based on the idea that because Nature cannot speak for itself, then we must
As you can see we have objected and spoken up for Saunton and its surroundings through the current system, but so far that hasn't worked.
So that makes us think the current system is broken.
The envrionmental protection regulatory framework is simply regulating the rate of destruction, rather than preventing it (as described in the link below).
Could the only way to truly protect Saunton be for it to gain these 'Rights of Nature , so that it's outstanding natural value is recognised and really protected?