At the end of 2011, regional employer Banks Renewables, part of The Banks Group, was granted planning permission for the Lambs Hill wind farm, which sits to the North West of Stockton, and has since been working to complete details for the construction phase of the project .
Work began on the four-turbine scheme earlier this year, with the County Durham-headquartered firm appointing Cheetham Hill Construction as main contractor, and a roster of sub-contractors is now taking on responsibility for tasks within their various areas of expertise.
Yarm-based contractor Cliff Addison Drainage Ltd has been signed up to manage the land drainage elements of the scheme, with Jem Road Construction of County Durham surfacing the access roads that will be used during its construction.
A team from the horticultural services section of Stockton Borough Council is taking on some landscape management work, while two new local jobs have also been created for groundworkers on the site, who were taken on through a local employment agency.
Lewis Stokes, community relations manager at The Banks Group, says: “Our long-term policy is to appoint locally-based suppliers around all our projects wherever possible, to ensure that we can maximise our investment in the local economy, and we’re pleased to be able to already be working with a number of North East contractors on the Lambs Hill scheme.”
The Lambs Hill Wind Farm will have an installed capacity of up to 10MW, and has been designed to deliver a range of economic, employment, social, supply chain and environmental benefits to the local area.
A dozen-strong community liaison committee, including six from local communities and representatives of Stockton Borough Council and the Banks Renewables project team, has been set up to help to keep local people informed about the progress of the construction of the new Lambs Hill wind farm
A community benefits sub-group will help to review and agree the local organisations and good causes that will receive funding from the Lambs Hill Wind Farm community benefits fund, which will be worth £10,000 per year throughout its 25-year lifespan, to help ensure that funding decisions reflect local priorities
Banks Renewables has established itself as one of the UK’s leading developers in the onshore wind energy sector. It has a number of completed and ongoing projects at various stages of development across the north of England and Scotland, and expects to commission the Lambs Hill wind farm before the end of the year.
Lewis Stokes continues: “Modern, efficient onshore wind farms such as Lambs Hill are acknowledged as providing the lowest cost form of carbon-free renewable energy generation for the UK, and we firmly believe they have a central role to play in the UK’s future energy mix, as well as in generating more of the energy that we all use via renewable means.
“We’re very happy to have started work on our latest onshore wind scheme, and are already looking forward to being able to generate clean, green energy from it by the end of the year.”
For further information on the Lambs Hill Wind Farm, contact the project team via lambshill@banksgroup.co.uk