1. Full map before decisions harden
All connected infrastructure should be disclosed clearly: hub, OHLs, landfall, cables, substations, compounds, access roads, BESS, private wire and related demand.
This is not “not in our backyard”.
It is: stop treating everyone’s backyard as spare land.
The Deveron Valley Fair Development Charter is a draft community framework for asking what a fair, climate-literate and place-respecting energy transition should look like here.
Why a local charter?
Major infrastructure should not be delivered through fragmented, developer-led processes that leave communities trying to reconstruct the full picture after decisions have already hardened.
We are looking beyond one valley. Similar pressures are being felt across Scotland, the Islands, Wales, Northern Ireland and northern England. The answer is not to move the burden from one community to another. The answer is better, joined-up, future-fit decision-making.
A fair transition is not only about what is built. It is about who decides, who benefits, who carries risk, and what is left behind.
Models we are learning from
Shetland Islands Council approved a Shetland Development Charter in July 2026, setting expectations around fair and collaborative development, local voice, joined-up thinking, environmental protection, legacy, community benefit, ownership, housing and community wealth building.
Aberdeenshire Council has also launched an Energy Development Charter to guide large-scale energy developers on how projects can increase positive impacts for communities and local economies.
Save the Deveron Valley is asking how these principles are being applied to the Deveron Valley and to connected infrastructure affecting Aberdeenshire, Moray and wider north-east communities.
Draft charter principles
2. Community evidence before site selection
Local evidence should shape the comparison of sites, not be reduced to mitigation once preference has hardened.
3. Cumulative assessment as lived reality
Communities experience roads, water, wildlife, farms, noise, landscape and stress as one lived reality, not separate technical files.
4. Fair share and public benefit
Every major project should answer: who owns, who profits, who carries risk, who loses land, who gains capacity, and what benefit is secured locally?
5. Community energy and resilience
Communities should be offered serious routes to local energy ownership, bill support, resilience, heat, power and community wealth where lawful and viable.
6. Environmental protection first
Water, soils, woodland, wildlife, river restoration, dark skies, quiet roads and landscape character should be treated as assets, not obstacles.
7. Homes, farms and rural continuity
No community should be reduced to land parcels. Property blight, displacement, tenancy, succession, farm viability and rural business continuity must be addressed.
8. Independent community support
Communities need independent planning, legal, technical, wellbeing, land and farm advice. Developer liaison is not the same as independent care.
9. Delivery plans, not promises
Developers should publish local delivery plans for jobs, procurement, housing, training, community benefit, monitoring, reporting and enforceability.
10. Public reporting and accountability
Commitments should be tracked, published, reviewed and enforceable over the lifetime of the project, not announced and forgotten.
Questions for councils, Ministers and developers
- How is Aberdeenshire Council applying its Energy Development Charter to the proposed Strathbogie Hub and connected infrastructure?
- What equivalent framework applies where impacts cross into Moray or affect communities beyond one planning boundary?
- What independent support is available for distressed or overwhelmed residents, land users and communities?
- What community-energy or local-resilience options are being considered before communities are asked to host strategic infrastructure?
- What public benefit is secured locally, and how will it be enforced?
Downloadable charter draft
A fuller draft charter will be prepared as a free download.