Unpublished article regarding Walshaw Moor blanket bog - September 2015

This was written for the Landworker magazine in autumn 2025 but which has yet to be published. 

For over a decade Landworker has reported on destructive developments on Walshaw Moor blanket bog. This comprises part of the 245,000 acres of upland peatlands nationally. These form the UK’s largest carbon land store and which makes them essential for mitigating extreme weather events such as flooding. They are also one of the most diverse habitats worldwide.

In 2014, Natural England handed out on behalf of the coalition government over £2.5 million to landowner Richard Bannister to help him burn the bog. This facilitated grouse shooting for his chums. Over the following years many local residents in Mytholmroyd and Hebden Bridge were to become convinced that the increased flooding they experienced were the result of the destruction.

Further public monies were spent on increased flood defences. Due to dissolved organic carbon entering the water supply, Yorkshire Water also needed to spend more on increased treatment for pollution. Customers had to foot the bill.

Yet remarkably, Walshaw Moor may now become the first peatland in Britain to have built on it an onshore wind farm, which would dwarf anything to date.

Calderdale Wind Farm Ltd (CWFL), who are disputing claims that it is one of many similar schemes they hope to construct, assert that the electricity generated from the scheme would power 286,000 homes.

There is strong local opposition to the proposals. Over 2,500 people in the Calder Valley constituency signed a national petition of over 15,000 signatures calling for a ban on wind farms on protected peatland. Although the government has rejected this, campaigners from the long-established Ban the Burn campaign group, who met MPs on a Parliamentary visit, have noted that planning minster Matthew Pennycock mentioned blanket bog during debates on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill.

This legislation has been criticised by environmental campaigners who contend it will remove protections for important habitat and species.

The Bill is currently being examined in the House of Lords. Ban the Burn, which otherwise supports wind farms, is lobbying Peers and hope some will present amendments blocking wind farms on peat bog.

Jenny Shepherd of Ban the Burn, which also believes CWFL should be required to provide additional information to Calderdale Council’s planning department to enable local residents to properly study the planning application, wants to make contact with people in windy, peaty constituencies.

“These number around 30 across parts of Northumberland, Exmoor, Dartmoor and the Lake District. The outcome of the Walshaw Moor application will have significant implications for these localities. Some readers might want to alert their MPs,” said Shepherd who claims that work wise it would be far better for the government to back restoring blanket bog “as this will help build a skills base to help with conserving and restoring the source of 5% of the UK’s carbon emissions and which need reducing to tackle global warming.”

Jenny can be contacted on 07309 388887 changingmorethanlightbulbs@gmail.com

Any readers who might like to visit the proposed wind farm site would be welcome to join Jenny and members of Calderdale TUC, including the author, on Saturday 6th September for a walk that will take around 4 hours and starts outside Halifax.