13-03-2025
Campaigner ready for latest battle to stop pylons
The owner of a popular canal-side inn is going into battle again to stop electricity pylons from being built GEN Cymru is seeking to run power lines almost 50km (31 miles) from Cefn Coch in Powys to connect with the National Grid at Lower Frankton in it has faced opposition from people, including Mark Baggett, the co-owner of the Navigation Inn at Maesbury successfully fought off a previous attempt to build pylons through the area and said the power cables should either run through Wales or run underground.
In 2014, his pub became a focal point for what he said was a "very, very vocal" campaign against pylons, with information boards up in the even renamed it the "Pylon Inn" for a day to raise about the new plans, Mr Baggett said: "It's not fair that the proposals that come from Wales are not considering taking the power through their own country."We haven't got big mountains where you can hide things," he Llewellyn Jones from Green Gen Cymru has been involved in running a series of consultation events to explain the said the pylons would be smaller than the ones previously proposed, with an average height of 28.5m (94ft).He also promised to listen to people's views and said the plans had already been adapted to take feedback on board and had been moved away from communities such as Pant and Crickheath in he conceded: "This is a large infrastructure coming through parts of the country."This is not going to be an exercise where everybody's happy."He also said running the entire route underground would cost five times as much, and those costs would ultimately be passed on to the consumer.
Mr Baggett said his pub was in "an extremely beautiful part of the country", and he wanted to keep it that said he worried for businesses, like a nearby wedding venue, and said pylons would "ruin the view" for wedding guests wanting to take Baggett said he and his fellow objectors were not so-called Nimbys - Not in My Back Yard - but wanted the alternatives properly looked on the plans were due to continue until mid-April, and a planning application was then expected next approved, work would start in 2027 and be completed by 2029.
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