I spent a productive afternoon examining the route of the Vyrnwy Frankton power line proposal that is now open for statutory public consultation until April 26th. There is a public consultation event at West Felton village hall next Thursday 27th between 2pm and 7pm.
I took a look at the route from Woolston Bank, passed our house, between Aston Hall and Oswestry golf club, North of The British Ironworks, over Holyhead Road, South Berghill Lane and up to Lower Frankton by The Navigation Inn.
There is a construction depot adjacent to Holyhead Road. The terminal substation is in Lower Frankton where the powerline will join the existing national grid pylons.
The route is principally made up of 132kv 28.5m high lattice framework pylons. A good place to judge the scale of the proposal is by the Navigation Inn.
The interactive map of the route is here: https://greengenvyrnwyfrankton.com/en/interactive-map/
Helen Morgan MP has been active on the issues around the powerline and has been pushing for the cables to be undergrounded instead of overhead. Back in the day I once worked for the MEB’s undergrounding team. Undergrounding cables is more expensive but it can mean fewer points of failure and less vulnerability to storms and extreme weather. Overhead cables be cooler with less risk of overheating. Design is also an important consideration. For example, the T-pylon is a third of the height of a traditional pylon and has been used to connect 48.5km in the Mendip Hills AONB.
There many issues of concern for residents as previous public meetings demonstrated. If you have any comments on the proposals or any questions please feel free to get in touch.
I followed that visit up by talking to residents in Whittington. Issues that came up were:
- Conservative incompetence at Shropshire Council,
- their financial problems,
- the tip booking fiasco,
- Trump,
- parking on Station Road by the chippy and the school,
- the plight of farms and the farm inheritance tax
- and ambulance wait times.
There was little appetite to support conservatives on May 1st election.
