Given the many factors involved in planning a wind generator, developers and installers could be forgiven for thinking good quality mapping is not that important.
Yet when it comes to submitting a planning application, national planning policy dictates a set of requirements on formats and scales with the full expectation that the maps involved are both up to date and legally licensed.
Norwich-headquartered Windcrop, which has installed more than 450 small-scale wind turbines, recognises the benefits of a managed approach to maps.
“We submit approximately 50 planning applications a month on average," said Senior Planning Simon Henry. To have these validated under national planning guidance, we are required to submit maps and plans at pre-defined scales and in prescribed formats. Such is the volume of work, we needed a solution to make the production of these maps as quick and cost effective as possible.”
Crucially for Windcrop, they need to be able to generate Ordnance Survey map data at all the scales required by local authority planning departments across the country. These include 1:200, 1:500, 1:1 000 and 1:1 250 scale.
Simon explained: “Different local authorities have different requirements and because we work in so many areas we needed a flexible solution. If we couldn’t supply to the required scales and formats we simply wouldn’t be able to have our applications validated.”
Now equipped with the online Plans Ahead platform, Windcrop can generate three different kinds of mapping. The first is a large-scale block plan at 1: 500. This is ideal for showing the distances between the proposed turbine and existing buildings and natural features on site.
The second is a site location plan at 1: 2 500 scale showing the extent of the client’s land ownership and its relationship with neighbouring properties.
Simon added: “We can annotate any of these data outputs very easily and quickly. For example on the block plan, some authorities require us to show a proposed turbine as a circle while others need a triangle. We simply add the relevant details on top of the map. In the same way, we can show detail such as the width of an access route and how a cable will run from the turbine to the grid connection.”
Plans Ahead offers an easy to use online interface that requires no specialist GIS knowledge. As it is hosted, there are also no data storage worries and users can make changes to their plans online at no additional cost. This provides visibility of the planning process and an excellent means of managing and tracking the development lifecycle of a project.
In addition, the operating rules simplify licensing and guarantee copyright of map data for use in the relevant planning application.
Summarising the benefits, Simon concluded: “Plans Ahead has helped us reduce the time it takes to put applications together, in some cases by as much as half.”
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