14 Jan 2026
The Scottish Government has been accused of snubbing a convention of community councils from across rural Scotland which is expected to call for a halt to all onshore renewable energy projects when it meets this Saturday (January 17).
Representatives of over 50 South of Scotland community councils, plus delegates from the Highlands and North East Scotland will gather at Jedburgh Town Hall, and are set to approve a demand that all pending onshore projects should be paused while the Scottish Government’s controversial National Planning Framework 4 (NPF4) policy is reviewed.
An invitation was extended to First Minister John Swinney and all other party leaders, with the option of sending a representative, but it is understood no SNP MSPs or MPs are due to attend.
Other parties are sending prospective election candidates, but constituency MP John Lamont and MSP Rachel Hamilton, both Conservatives, will be there.
Convention organiser Bob Hope, who chairs the Leitholm, Eccles and Birgham community council, said “With more wind turbines, battery energy storage systems and grid pylons in the pipeline, we are facing the industrialisation and destruction of rural Scotland as we know it.
“We are besieged by aggressive energy companies and it would be quite disgraceful if the Scottish Government was unable to send a senior representative to hear our concerns first hand.
“They might think they have heard the arguments before, but in an election year they should want to witness the depth of feeling in our communities, not run away from it. This will be the biggest single gathering of Scotland’s rural communities and I would have thought it was important for elected politicians to be there, but as it stands the convention is being snubbed by the Scottish Government.”
Concerns focus on the way NPF4 Policy 11 is being implemented, which stipulates that “significant weight will be placed on the contribution of the proposal to renewable energy generation targets and on greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets.”
There is also a call for the 50 megawatts threshold at which plans are referred for approval to the Scottish Government’s secretive Energy Consents Unit (ECU) to be raised to 100mw, to give local authorities more control. Several projects have been approved by the ECU and rubber stamped by ministers despite objections from local planning committees.
“What we are seeing is the Scottish Government riding roughshod over our communities in which none of the arguments against inappropriate projects can succeed because of the dogmatic presumption in favour of approval no matter what.
“It has got to stop before any more damage is done to our landscape and heritage, and on Saturday I hope we can send a clear and united message to the Scottish Government that enough is enough,” said Mr Hope.
The meeting at Jedburgh Town hall starts at 2pm on Saturday, January 17 and is expected to finish around 4pm.