To provide briefing on progress with wind farm developments in the coastal waters off South Cumbria and invite Members contributions to the North Western and North Wales Sea Fisheries Committee responses.

1.1 Consultations on the Environmental Statements for the West of Duddon Sands offshore wind farm and the Walney offshore wind farm were issued recently. These proposed developments would be mostly located between the 6 and 12 mile limits west of Walney Island and Morecambe Bay. The deadlines for comments are the 19 May 06 for West of Duddon Sands and 5 June 06 for Walney. Officers need to have any comments from Members 5 working days in advance of these dates in order to prepare comprehensive responses.

2.1 The full environmental statements for both these proposed wind farms are available from the SFC office on request. Today, the non-technical summaries are available to the Committee as backing papers to this report.

2.2 In addition, we have as a backing paper a consultants report: 'Walney and West of Duddon Offshore Wind Developments: Commercial Fisheries-Existing Baseline' by Brown and May Ltd. This report contains a compilation of data relating to the fisheries which take place in the area of the wind farms and throughout the wider Irish Sea. It examines what is known about the areas where fisheries take place including the number of vessels, their nationality and the landings from each ICES statistical rectangle. The rectangles directly relevant to these wind farms are 37E6 and 36E6. The report also examines trends in the fisheries over the last 5 years.

2.3 The data used by the report includes surveillance sightings and satellite tracking from Government agencies as well as information from fishermen and fishermen's representatives groups at National, regional (such as Producer Organisations and local level. Fisheries values from 2000-04 are derived from Defra and Seerad fisheries statistics.

3.1 The 2 wind farms now being considered are in addition to 3 other major wind farm developments within the area of the local fishing industry of NW England (Annex A) and further very large developments off the coast of North Wales. The others in NW England are the Barrow offshore wind farm, (Round 1 and currently being built), The Ormonde which submitted an ES in 2005 and the Cirrus Shell Flats Array for which the definitive location has not yet been fixed.

3.2 A major concern is the increase in cabling on the seabed of the Eastern Irish Sea resulting from these and all the other developments and offshore installations. Subsea cabling poses a hazard to various types of fishing and the resulting exclusion areas further increase the lost fishing grounds. The areas lost to fishing through cables and pipelines have not been analysed in the ES.

3.3 The ES do attempt to review the cumulative impacts of all these developments but do not adequately analyse the total cumulative impact on the inshore fishing fleet of our District. Looking at the whole fishing fleet, including all EC vessels which are dependant on the wider Irish Sea does not give a true picture of the impact which the cumulative loss of grounds from all these developments will have on the inshore fleet which traditionally operates in and is heavily dependant on these areas.

3.4 The area for development is currently an all year round mixed fishery for plaice, cod, whiting and prawns providing the a significant part of the livelihood for much of the fishing industry in this part of our district. In the early planning stages of windfarm developments, fishermen appeared to consider that they would be able to continue fishing more or less as normal between the turbines. They now say that even should they be allowed access, they are most unlikely to take the risk of fishing with mobile towed gear within 1000m or so of turbines and are therefore unlikely to venture close to the areas of development let alone inside them. Some static gear fishing in the areas may be able to continue such as potting for crabs and lobsters. It is likely, therefore, that the pattern of fishing in the area will be significantly altered by the wind farm developments. Some mobile gear (e.g. trawling and dredging) vessels may be forced out of business, particularly those from Fleetwood which use the area off Barrow most frequently. Conversely there could be some increase in potting for crabs and lobsters and the turbines may even help to improve habitat availability for some shellfish. However trials of potting in these areas up to now have not been encouraging.

3.5 The wind farms will disproportionately affect the local UK inshore fishing industry through loss of accessible fishing grounds. The effect on the larger fleet and vessels from other EC member states will be negligible because they have unrestricted access to the more productive areas of the Irish Sea. The further loss of inshore grounds, piled on other pressures on the industry is likely to make some local vessels uneconomic to operate. This fact is not explicitly recognised in the reports.

3.6 The Environmental Statements find that less than 30 locally based inshore fishing vessels will be affected by the development which is probably correct. They also find that the effects on employment will be limited to those vessels but that does not take wider impacts into account. If 30 vessels were lost, this could result in loss of between 50 and 70 fishing jobs. The report makes no analysis of the number of shore jobs which may be lost and a standard multiple of one sea job supporting 4 land based jobs would indicate that between 200 and 300 jobs in associated sectors could be lost as a result of the development. This would be a major impact on the local coastal economies of our District.

3.7 We should acknowledge that it is difficult to estimate the actual impact of developments on the local fishing fleet. Future trends are difficult to predict when fishing is subject to continual changes in national and EC policy and legislation. The population characteristics of commercial species (e.g. fecundity, hatching and survival) are also highly variable from one year to the next.

3.8 There are clearly other serious pressures on the fishing industry such as rising fuel and operating costs, decommissioning schemes and increasing management restrictions. There have also been significant losses of fishing grounds resulting from other offshore installations such as oil and gas platforms pipelines and cabling. Nevertheless, the ES do not take into account the additional pressure which further loss of fishing ground could have on an industry which is in many respects, already only marginally viable.

3.9 It is probably not realistic to expect that comments from the fishing sector will result in any of these schemes being dropped or moved further offshore where the impacts on the whole fishing fleet including EC vessels would be more evenly spread. However, impacts should be carefully analysed and recorded and compensation made available to individuals adversely affected by these developments.

1. West of Duddon Sands Offshore Windfarm Environmental Statement – Non-Technical Summary (March 2006).

2. Walney Offshore Windfarm Environmental Statement – Non-Technical Summary (March 2006).

3. Walney & West of Duddon Offshore Windfarm Developments: Commercial Fisheries – Existing baseline