Monday February 16th 2026
Written by Local Democracy Reporter, Paul Kelly
Anger has been expressed at the go-ahead for a huge Borders wind farm after objections to it were “timed out”.
The Ditcher Law wind farm near Oxton was opposed by both Scottish Borders Council and Heriot Community Council, due to its impact on the environment.
The application includes plans for eight turbines, five of which will be 200m high, and a battery energy storage system.
The Ditcher Law application was submitted to the Energy Consents Unit, which handles applications for electricity stations over 500MW, on September 15, 2023.
But the developer did not submit important additional information, including an impact study, until April 10 last year and a deadline for comments on the new information was then set for May 16, just five weeks later.
SBC advised that it would be unable to review the new information for several months, due to a massive backlog in Section 36 applications, but its call for an extension to the deadline was rejected.
ECU has now ruled that the concern raised by the council was made too late in the application process.
The area is designated as a Special Landscape Area, with peatland, woodland, meandering burns and moorland.
John Williams, chair of Heriot Community Council, said: “This decision is totally anti-democratic and rides roughshod over the views of local communities and the democratically elected councillors of Scottish Borders Council.
“To give them only five weeks to review such a major scheme is totally unfair. The council has been inundated with applications and had already advised the ECU that its planning committee was fully booked for the next six months.”
Rory Steel, chair of Lauderdale Preservation Group, said: “This is a seriously flawed decision which is of grave concern to people in Lauderdale and right across the Borders.
“This development is totally in the wrong place, is a threat to wildlife and even worse – it is unnecessary. Scotland’s current and future energy demand has already been met – even looking ahead to 2050 there is already excess power generation in Scotland.
“We must call to a halt to this industrialisation of our countryside, until there is a proper strategy in place for new energy developments.”
The decision, published on Friday, states that Scottish Ministers received approximately 66 representations regarding the development, including three responses in support of the application and 63 against.
Scottish Borders Council voted to oppose the development on September 8, 2025, reflecting the democratic decision of its planning committee.
But the Scottish Government’s ECU indicated the objection would be treated as out-of-time and would therefore not automatically trigger a public local inquiry (PLI).
Friday’s decision letter states: “Although the Scottish Ministers acknowledge that some significant but largely localised and contained landscape, visual, and residential visual amenity effects will arise, they consider that these impacts are outweighed by the overall benefits of the proposed development.”
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