environmental statement - Rotherham's Online Application for ...

No Change – Site not visible or barely visible from the landscape
character area;
Low Magnitude of Change - Presence of the site marginally alters the
appreciation of scale, remoteness, visual composition, pattern or
landform;
Medium Magnitude of Change - Presence of the site notably alters
the appreciation of scale, remoteness, visual composition, pattern or
landform slightly;
High Magnitude of Change - Presence of the site fundamentally
alters the appreciation of scale, remoteness, visual composition,
pattern or landform.
MAGNITUDE OF VISUAL IMPACTS
6.66 Visual impacts are caused by the introduction of new elements into the
views of a landscape or the removal of elements in the existing view.
6.67 Clearly justified professional judgement has been used to determine the
magnitude of impacts using the following criteria as guidance only:
No Change - No change or negligible change in views;
Low Magnitude of Change - Some change in the view that is not
prominent but visible to some visual receptors;
Medium Magnitude of Change - Some change in the view that is
clearly visible in the view and forms an important but not defining
element in the view;
High Magnitude of Change - A major change in the view that has a
defining influence on the overall view.
6.68 Using these criteria, determining levels of magnitude clearly depends on
how prominent the development would be in the landscape.
6.69 For clarification, the use of the term „prominent‟ relates to how noticeable
the features of the development would be. This is affected by how close
the viewpoint is to the development but not entirely dependent on this
factor. Other modifying factors include: the focus of the view, visual
screening and the nature and scale of other landscape features within the
view. Rather than specifying distances at which the turbines will be
dominant, prominent or incidental to the view etc, the dominance of the
turbines in each view is described in detail for each viewpoint taking all the
variables into consideration. This approach is supported by best practice
guidelines 7.
7 University of Newcastle (2002) Visual Assessment of Wind farms Best Practice. Scottish Natural
Heritage Commissioned Report F01AA303A.
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Penny Hill Wind Farm
Environmental Statement