The Lake District's landscape lobby group is calling on the Government and electricity firms to help banish overhead cabling.

Friends of the Lake District (FoLD) has produced a report pressing for more resources to be put into placing overhead wires underground.

The research, carried out by the UK Centre for Economic and Environmental Development, included a review of existing surveys into people's attitudes to pylons and cables, concluding that the "public find the landscape impacts of overhead lines unacceptable".

"If you ask anybody and pointed them out, they would probably say they are horrible, but it's like all these things, people get used to them," said Jan Darrall of Kendal-based FoLD. "The trick is often when you get rid of them, they say wow'!"

Burying power lines in the Lake District would improve landscape quality bringing many benefits including more visitors and reducing the cost to electricity firms of

fixing storm-damaged overhead cabling, she argued.

To enable electricity suppliers to pay for undergrounding', the report suggests a green tariff on electricity and establishing a central environmental fund for the work. As a first step, it is recommending that bodies like the National Park Authorities and electricity suppliers do surveys into public willingness to pay a surcharge.

"Just adding something like 0.01p per distribution unit would be nominal on a bill but nationwide give quite a significant fund," said Dr Darrell.

The report has been prepared to feed into a review of the electricity price control process by the Government regulator OFGEM, which will be completed in 2005. It is looking to promote undergrounding across the country but wants national parks, including the Lake District National Park Authority, to be among those leading the way.

LDNPA's senior planning officer

Norman Atkins said park policy already encouraged undergrounding or picking the least visually intrusive route for new or replacement cabling in sensitive areas.

"It's simply a question of having the money to do it, he said."

Cost was also at the forefront of the considerations of United Utilities.

"While we would always look to minimise the visual impact of overhead lines we have to balance that with the fact there are technical difficulties and the cost," a spokesman said. "We have 15,000 km of lines in our patch, including Cumbria and Manchester. If they were all to be buried there would be tremendous costs which would be passed on to customers." Meanwhile, Margaret Sanders of South Lakeland Friends of the Earth, said she felt it was more important to establish a green tariff for investing in renewable energy rather than spending money on hiding overhead cables.

"I don't like to say we disapprove obviously, but that (undergrounding) isn't one of our main concerns."

April 9, 2003 10:00