According to Bournemouth Borough Council, Navitus Bay Development Limited (a joint venture between Eneco and EDF) should pay GBP 975 million over 30 years to compensate for an adverse impact of the Navitus Bay on local tourism, should the project be built.
Mark Smith, Bournemouth’s Service Director for Tourism, has presented a report which says that the local economy would lose GBP 6.3 billion and 4,923 jobs because of up to 194 wind turbines, proposed to be placed off the Dorset and Hampshire coasts, to the west of the Isle of Wight.
“The tourism interests would only be protected if the developer is required to mitigate the tourism loss by providing funding of £32.5m per annum and £975m over the lifetime of the project [30 years] to the affected areas,” BBC quotes Mr. Smith as saying.
Stuart Grant, Senior Project Manager for Navitus Bay responded by saying that his company does not accept these findings and that the project would not have a major impact on local tourism. He pointed out that offshore wind farms that are already built across the UK prove that.
“We’ll look at the impacts that we’ll have as a project – which are insignificant – and make any funds appropriate to those impacts,” Mr. Grant added.
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Offshore WIND Staff; Image: Bournemouth Borough Council