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SHETLAND, Scotland, UK, September 20, 2006
(Refocus Weekly)
A communications agency in Britain has developed
an on-line community consultation system (TOCCS) which is designed
to provide windfarm developers with a balanced range of viewpoints
on a project, demonstrate ‘best practice’ and facilitate faster
planning decisions.
TOCCS was developed by 2Cs of Ipswich to provide an online
channel for communicating every aspect of a proposed development,
from the project’s environmental impact to its possible effects on
local house prices. The information is available to key stakeholders
and the local and extended community which, in turn, allows
interested parties to access all the information required to make an
informed decision on the development.
“Up until now, the more traditional methods of achieving community
consultation, such as meetings and correspondence to local planning
authorities, have usually been plagued by the NIMBY viewpoint and
dominated by those with a strong enough opinion to attend a meeting
or write a letter on the subject,” explains Bob Woolliams of 2Cs.
“We wanted to develop a system which would ensure the broadest
possible engagement from all individuals with an interest in the
area and help involve communities mould and influence the planned
projects.”
“With TOCCS, the final decision making is not only democratic but is
based on a process which has been transparent and truly dynamic,” he
adds.
The system was launched recently with a public consultation on
Viking Energy, a 600 MW windfarm proposed for Scotland by a joint
venture between the Shetland community and SEE Generation. The
project would generate 23,000 MWh of green power to supply 590,000
homes in Scotland.
Individuals can go through material posted online or, if they have
seen the site and still need further information on a specific
concern, they can send a question directly to Viking Energy for a
person response. If the project developer feels the question is an
area that requires more detail on TOCCS, it can add information to
the site immediately. All communication through the site is stored
on a database from which trends and issues can be developed and a
complete audit trail created.
The output from TOCSS will provide detailed reporting that
illustrates key concerns of the local community, and will show how
many people visited the site and compare that to the number of
people with specific concern not met by the site. It will show which
were the most contentious areas and the information of most interest
to people, and will list all the emails sent to the developer.
When the consultation period is over, Viking Energy will be able to
demonstrate how it met specific anxieties and, ultimately, if a wide
range of windfarm developers adopt the system, it will identify key
national concerns so government can report on attitudes on a larger
geographical scale.
“We carried out an extensive review of the products and services
available within the consultation market and the sophistication and
dynamism of the TOCCS system was head and shoulders above anything
else we saw,” says David Thomson of Viking Energy. “The 2Cs team
also demonstrated an unrivaled passion for the windfarm project as a
whole.”
The involvement by Shetland Islands Council as a developer of the
windfarm, as well as host, gives the Shetland community a level of
control that will ensure full public consultation with full
environmental awareness and the growth of a local industry with a
genuine competitive advantage, say officials. The Viking windfarm
could displace the annual emission of 2 megatonnes of CO2 and reduce
Scotland's entire CO2 output by 5%.
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