The UK Advertising Agency (ASA) has this week ordered anti- wind farm campaigners to stop using misleading material in their leaflets.
The leaflet produced by a campaign group ‘Vale Villagers Against Scottish Power’ was designed to create fear in communities surrounding a proposed wind farm site in Warwickshire, England.
References in the anti- wind farm leaflet to wind energy ‘facts’ such as nearby house price reduction and ‘constant noise causing depression, sleep deprivation, headaches and memory loss’ were found by the ASA to be misleading.
The ASA described the ‘research’ referred to by the campaigners as being of “low quality”. The ASA concluded that “the reported research was not robust enough to support the claim in the ad.”
ASA also concluded that a wind farm house price report produced by Oxford Brookes University was misrepresented by the campaign group. The Authority ordered that their claim of “a reduction in house prices of as much as 54% for properties within a one-mile radius of wind farms” not be used again. For the full details visit the ASA website.
