Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Campaigners from the Towie Valley were outside court this morning, backed by local politicians
00:05and language campaigners, in the shadow of a miniature pylon.
00:09The owners of five farms had been told GreenGen Cymru were seeking warrants to access their
00:14land to conduct ecological studies, ahead of a planning application to build a network
00:19of pylons from a proposed wind farm in Powys to a new substation near Carmarthen.
00:25One campaigner told me the turnout showed the strength of feeding locally.
00:29It's great isn't it, on a Monday morning when people should be in work, and farmers, middle
00:35of lambing season, I know one of the land owners affected, he's supposed to be milking,
00:42so it's great that people have taken time off from work on a Monday morning to be here
00:48to support these land owners.
00:50The owners of the five farms had originally been told their case could not be conducted
00:54in Welsh, but the district judge, Mark Leighton, decided to ask a colleague from North Wales,
00:59Gwyn Jones, to step in and hold a hearing this afternoon via a video link.
01:04The court heard from Barrister Isabella Tafur, representing GreenGen Cymru.
01:10She told the court that three farms had now agreed to grant access, but there were two
01:15farms still outstanding.
01:17The matter was adjourned by the judge, Gwyn Jones, until the 22nd of April.
01:22You can absolutely empathise with people, can't you?
01:26Many of them, many of the individuals are elderly, you know, never been in this position
01:32before in their lives.
01:35It felt like David and Goliath today, didn't it, you know, a corporate giant, really, with
01:44a very large and expensive team of lawyers, no doubt, faced with, you know, objectors
01:50that were farming families having to take, you know, a day out of lambing on such fine
01:55weather as this.
01:57GreenGen Cymru insist they have a right to access land as an independent distribution
02:02operator network.
02:04We do not want to be here, we didn't want to take them to court, but electricity is
02:08a national critical infrastructure and to progress with our land surveys for ecological
02:14reasons we do need access onto people's land.
02:18Landowners along a second route from Llanddewi Brefi to Llanddeweilog also face action shortly
02:23by the same company for refusing to allow access.