Winter view south east from the Eildon Hills, Scottish Borders
The proposal for a specific windfarm (this is one of many ongoing proposals in the Scottish Borders) was rejected last year (2024) by Scottish Borders Council, which prompted a Public Inquiry, which took place during the last week of January, 2025.
I’ve never attended a Public Inquiry before but I was determined to get to this one. It should have been simple enough as it was supposed to take place just 5 miles away, but because of the recent storm Eowyn, there was no power in the venue, and you cannot, clearly, have a public inquiry without power. Urgent consultations and inspections were held, and the Hydro Hotel in Peebles, near Edinburgh, was the preferred choice, with all the necessary amenities, including a strong and reliable source of power.
I had to take 2 buses to get there, and then walk uphill about half a mile, ending in a flight of stone steps, leading up to the imposing hotel entrance. Once inside I asked directions to the Bannockburn suite, found it, and opened the door. I had expected something rather different, a large room, perhaps with a stage at the far end, I had expected I would be able to slip in unnoticed, for I was late, but instead, although the room was certainly large, it was almost completely filled with two facing rows of tables, and people sitting at them. The questioning was ongoing. Where was there space for the public, in this public enquiry? I slid along the gap between the wall and the backs of people sitting in front of the tables and noticed to my relief, at the end of the room, a small unoccupied space, with 3 empty chairs. I sat down there.
The cross examination was going on. Two landscape reports had been made, one by the applicant, the other by our landscape architect. Lawyers for each side had the chance to ask questions of each landscape architect. It was like learning a new language, and that was part of the interest for me, trying to follow what the questions actually meant. I did not always manage it. But there was definitely a sense of contest, of thrust and parry, of a duel, an ongoing duel but using words and concepts, meanings and interpretations, rather than physical weapons.
Sometimes I found the intricacies of the arguments too hard to follow and my concentration strayed. I started looking at the paintings on the walls. The horizons and the hills were pleasant enough, not dissimilar to the actual hills visible from the windows. Then my gaze slipped down and I realised that the cluster of people in the foreground were very active. I peered closer. Yes, I was not imagining it, these figures were soldiers, portraying the battle of Bannockburn, and they were stabbing and slicing, they were heaving and slashing, horses were rearing, some figures were lying on the ground, some were waving their swords, some were trampled, and I was rather glad that my vision was not keen enough to make out too many details. One though, I could not help noticing. These men were wearing kilts, and to my mind, they were far too short. I do not really know the length of kilts worn by people in those days but I cannot accept that they would be as depicted, above the knee. For sure you would not want your kilt to be trailing round your ankles, liable to be tripped over, when charging in battle. But surely you would want to cover your knees? This is Scotland for heaven’s sake, it is cold! Though perhaps all this fighting might keep you warm. When was this battle fought, what time of year? Were the trees in leaf, was the grass growing? The painting gave few clues. These thoughts stayed with me until lunch time, when we walked down the corridor to the vast restaurant which was unoccupied apart from us, a clutch of 20 or so people, our team and their team, and I enjoyed the coffee hugely and John W, seeing I had nothing to eat, because it had to be ordered earlier and I was not there, kindly gave me half of his sandwich.
How are we doing? I said, my mouth full of sandwich, what do you think the outcome will be?
Too close to call, said lawyer John.
Earlier, I had heard him asking another lawyer, a Mr F, representing an estate which is also objecting to the windfarm, what he thought. What do you think he said, or something along those lines, it was one of those questions which are not detailed, do not need to be, everyone knows what it means, what is at stake, are we winning or are they, who will come out on top, us or them, and Mr F, who almost always has a slight smile on his face, said, 50/50, well, there is not much follow up response you can give to that. All you can hope for is that, when your landscape architect is being questioned, she can hold her own, and she is a slim, dark-haired woman, and when after lunch she was sitting up there, at the top of the room, ready to be questioned by lawyer Flinty, not his real name, she looked a little pale.
But as far as I could tell, she held her ground, she did not change her opinion of the severity of the visual impact of the wind turbines, and she did not agree that she had confused issues of landscape character effects and visual effects, no, she was quite clear about the difference, and stood by what she had written. Ah, this business of severity of impact and acceptability of impact. Who decides what is acceptable? Well, the applicants downplay the impact, and upplay acceptability. But they do not have to live there and be confronted with said impact every day, day after day. We have to hold our ground because the ground is ours, and we wish it to be well and healthy and we wish it to be unperturbed, we do not want to have to fight over our land the way the men in the mural are fighting, with their short kilts and their rearing horses, we do not want to have to fight in marshes and ditches, we do not want to see our birds killed by turbine blades, we wish to hold on to that peaceful landscape, so that the birds can breed and float in the upper reaches of the sky, unmolested in the air currents warmed by spring and summer sunshine.
Lawyer Mr F, the one who always seems to be slightly smiling, gently smiling, even when interrogating, even when he responds quickly to the remark, ‘I don’t know how familiar you are with windfarms ….’ with ‘I don’t need a personal remark, I’ve attended many of these inquiries I am very familiar with windfarms’, yes even then, he returns so quickly to affability you could be forgiven for thinking he had not made such a swift and sharp riposte, he could, for a few seconds, easily have been one of those kilted men depicted on the wall, slicing into his enemy. I had thought of Mr F as an amiable squirrel, but I have to modify this, he is a squirrel who can cutely cradle nuts, yes, but who is also equipped with a langue de vipère.
*
On the last day, I am not present, but watching the webcam, I find the behaviour and the remarks of another team, utterly arresting. Heading this team is a petite, slim woman with short red hair and who wears a dark suit. She, I decide, has to be a bird, a keen-eyed bird, highly intelligent, perhaps a jackdaw, smooth and dark, sleek and alert. She is delicate, she is the essence of steel. Surrounding her, sitting on either side, and behind her with their backs to the windows, are her team, large burly men also in dark suits, one with a bushy beard, and they look hard into the distance, their faces immobile, apart from their eyes, which move just a little, from time to time, as if checking out the movements of others, while keeping at least one eye on what is happening in the room, on the path between them and the door.
Yes, it’s the MOD. We can breathe easy, for they are on our side, and that is precisely where you would want them to be. They have something to defend, they have an area, an international agreement, a noise level, and most of all, a reputation, to defend. And they are not going to be swayed by any smooth talking, persuasive, smiling or otherwise, folk, whose agenda we all know is profit and personal advancement. I am sorry to say this, but that talk is not going to be effective. These people have defence laced into their bones. They are the real soldiers of Bannockburn. Or they would be if it came to it, but they are here to show precisely how horrible it would be if ‘it came to it’, they are here to use their strength of purpose to show that it is to everyone’s interest not to let it come to that, and while people may have different ideas as to what exactly ‘that’ might mean, where that might lie, what ground that might cover, it does not matter, we all know really, that these people and their defences are not to be messed with, nothing is worth it, to trigger their defensive behaviour. It is a worthy deliverance and buoys me up with optimism.
I also should mention the Reporter herself, the lynchpin of the whole proceedings, who holds it all together with great politeness and courtesy.
And then, also very important, there is the young man who keeps the power going, who keeps the cameras rolling, keeps the sound going, and when a microphone does not work, or starts to play up, starts to flash red, or flicker off and on, he moves swiftly and smoothly to the rescue, slips like a seal in water to fix it, does so admirably, quickly, and slips back again, smooth as an ocean wave.
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