R EADERS may recall reading about the Atlantic Array — a huge development of large wind turbines out in the Bristol Channel.

At the last meeting of the Bideford Harbour Board we heard some fantastic news. John Butterwith, chair of the North Devon Fishermen's Association, announced that his members had just been awarded a contract to work with the developers on the initial stages of this scheme by providing supply vessels/passenger transport/guard ships etc.

Survey work is to start in April for the development which is to cover an area the size of the Isle of Wight and generate 1.5gw of electricity from 400 turbines — at a total cost of £4 billion. Construction should begin in 2014 and the electricity will be brought ashore via 13 cables to the sub-station at Alverdiscott. He also indicated that our port could well benefit from a lot of new ship movements with Yelland jetty also in the frame for large scale development — the large area of heavily polluted land there (the old power station site is full of asbestos) would provide the necessary storage space for the turbine components.

A lot of details have yet to be sorted out including compensation for the fishermen who think they will lose access to some valuable fishing grounds but hopefully we will soon be powering our homes with clean renewable energy — and all without the usual chorus of disapproval from the nimbys.

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TORRIDGE councillors often get to hear presentations from different organisations and last week we heard from Steve Pitcher the new head of North Devon+ which is a new organisation encompassing the old North Devon Enterprise, North Devon Marketing and North Devon Regeneration groups. The new company was set up on April 1, 2008, but had a "bumpy start to say the least" according to Mr Pitcher. It now has 30 staff in place (21 in Bideford) with more to be appointed and their funding last year was £1,132,251 of which they spent £1,132,160.

So what do they do? Well they have various aims — improving local productivity, raising skill levels, increasing prosperity, improving infrastructure and bringing world peace — sorry, I made that last one up but it gives some idea how challenging their existing aims are in any case. They hope to achieve their ambitions by focusing on five sectors — tourism, local food, agriculture, creative industries and renewable technologies — the latter of course already bearing fruit with the Atlantic Array I mentioned earlier.

When questions from councillors were invited Steve Clarke asked why was it that local wages were virtually the lowest in England? Mr Pitcher reckoned that the combination of traditionally low paid jobs in agriculture and tourism and the comparatively low number of formal qualifications in the work force were responsible — and turning these around "will require a very large investment". Cllr Clarke, however, put the blame on there being too many small businesses in North Devon who were actually too small to attract contracts and money from outside the area and in fact merely undercut each other in an effort to get a slice of the small local cake.

Cllr Geoff Lee asked where any new investment would come from but didn't really get a clear answer — probably because in these straitened times there aren't any major streams of cash, either public or private, that can be easily accessed. The council is to get regular updates on the work of North Devon+ so it will be interesting to see what their strategies are going to be to regenerate the area.

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A FEW months ago the Bideford Harbour Board discussed the possibility of exporting recyclable glass bottles and jars from the port. Since then the chairman of Recresco, the firm which currently moves the glass by road, had been down to inspect the facilities available. Apparently he was impressed and is considering some small initial shipments of up to 1,000 tonnes to start with.

Cllr Andrew Eastman wondered if we could use Brunswick Wharf to both store the glass and load it from? I pointed out that having a store of recycling material on Bideford's prime site probably wouldn't go down too well. It is, of course, abundantly clear to anyone who has ever looked at the mud banks in front of East-the-Water that the use of Brunswick Wharf would require constant dredging and this cost could render the whole operation very expensive. Our waste manger Ricky McCormack pointed out that the Cattle Market, with four existing areas suitable for storing the material, would be a much better and cheaper site. I therefore proposed we go for this site — and the vote was unanimously in favour — so hopefully there will be far fewer lorries on the road in future.

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MENTION of Brunswick Wharf reminded me that at our last town council meeting we were told that development plans for the five major sites in the town (Brunswick Wharf, Cattle Market, Bridge Street, The Pill and the Sports Ground) were no longer their responsibility but had been handed over to the Joint Development Team. The Bideford Regeneration Initiative which we heard has lost a lot of the organisations which originally joined it, are moving away from "bricks and mortar" towards "people and empowerment" which seems to mean hosting meetings with speakers. The problem with this is that the BRI have never actually achieved anything in terms of "bricks and mortar" — and I know that councillors are now asking where the large sums of money spent by the BRI actually went?