The Scottish Land Court has granted SSE Section 19A permission to build parts of the 443MW Viking wind farm on crofting land.
The decision, which is separate to the planning consent granted by the Scottish government last May, removes a remaining legal hurdle to the construction of SSE’s newer scheme with tip heights updated from 145 to 155 metres.
Section 19A consent allows construction of the wind farm on the common grazings, land which is regulated under Scots law to give crofters specific rights separate to those of the landlord.
The court’s members Lord Minginish and Tom Campbell ruled that nothing significant had changed since it gave the green light to the earlier version of the scheme in terms of the legal criteria of whether the development was for a reasonable purpose and that to carry it out would not be unfair.
They added that nothing had had changed in terms of their earlier 2018 ruling that SSE’s proposed scheme would provide fair recompense to crofters and that the crofting community would be likely to benefit financially from the development going ahead.
They noted a report provided by chartered surveyor Timothy John Kirkwood MRICS on SSE’s behalf which estimated rent payments and return to crofters over the life of the scheme as 40% higher than that approved with lower tip heights.
Several crofters had objected on the grounds of local environmental and visual impacts of the wind farm’s construction and its impact on peatland but Minginish and Campbell ruled that many of these had been matters for the planning process over which the Land Court had no jurisdiction.
Work on access tracks and a construction compound at the site has already begun after SSE took a final investment decision on the project in June.