Complaint:

a. A regional press ad, for Save Our Scenery Association (SOS), was headlined "COMING SOON TO A SHORE NEAR YOU!" and featured a photograph of wind turbines clustered along a coastline. The ad claimed "URGENT ACT NOW to SAVE YOUR BAY from Npower Renewable's plan to site the 8th largest wind farm in the world off our coast. There will be a forest of turbines stretching the width of our coast ...".

b. A leaflet, for SOS, claimed " ... Npower renewables ... wants to build a massive offshore wind factory off Llandudno, Rhos-on Sea and Colwyn Bay. These are the Gwynt-Y-Mor and Rhyl Flats wind factories for 260 wind turbines. Turbines will be up to 540 feet tall ... These monster turbines will only be about 6 miles off the coast of Llandudno Promenade ... These 2 sites will be nothing like the one off Prestatyn. They will be much, much bigger ...". A section of the leaflet, headed "What's wrong with the wind turbines?", claimed " ... The potential savings on fossil fuel or reducing CO2 emissions are minimal ... They have many damaging side-effects ... The developers have been asked to build the wind factory further out to sea. Their answer is that it is too costly, in other words, not profitable enough, despite the enormous subsidy from the tax payer ...".

Sustainable Energy Alliance challenged:

1. whether the photograph of the wind farm in the regional press ad was misleading, because it suggested that the proposed turbines would be bigger and closer to the shore than was the case;

2. whether the leaflet misleadingly implied turbines up to 540 feet tall would be only six miles off the coast of Llandudno Promenade, because they believed the turbines as near as six miles from the coast would be only 499 or 440 feet high;

3. whether the claim "These 2 sites will be nothing like the one off Prestatyn. They will be much, much bigger" was misleading, because only one of the two sites would be bigger than the one off Prestatyn;

4. whether the claim "The potential savings on fossil fuel or reducing CO2 emissions are minimal" could be substantiated;

5. whether the claim "They have many damaging side-effects" could be substantiated and

6. the claim "The developers have been asked to build the wind factory further out to sea. Their answer is that it is too costly, in other words, not profitable enough, despite the enormous subsidy from the tax payer", because the proposed location was decided on the basis of constraints, not costs, and because they believed the proposed wind farms would be funded without an enormous subsidy from the tax payer.

Codes Section: 3.1, 7.1 (Ed 11)

Adjudication:


1. Upheld
SOS asserted that their image of the proposed wind farm site was an accurate representation. They sent a report, called "Photography and turbine depiction issues", which they believed supported the accuracy of their representation. The report stated that what a photograph showed was significantly different from what the naked eye saw. SOS asserted that, because of that, to use a focal length of between 70 mm and 80 mm instead of the standard 50 mm for a full frame 35 mm camera was more representative of the view a person would see; they chose to use a 75 mm lens. They said they were able to scale their representation to a meteorological mast positioned on the proposed site and to the height of the proposed turbines.

The ASA took expert advice. The expert told us that, in his opinion, the basis of the photograph was accurate; however, the wind turbines had been crudely added in an effort to represent what they could look like and appeared too close to the shore. The expert said, in the right lighting conditions, the turbines could stand out in similar fashion to that depicted in the photograph; however he believed they would appear less densely spread across the horizon. He said the photograph was in panoramic format, which did not recreate the field of view given by the human eye. The expert considered that the photograph fell short of what the wind farm would look like to a viewer from the location shown.

We noted the views of both our expert and the SOS. We considered that, although readers would realise that the wind farm had not yet been built, they were likely to expect that the photograph was an accurate representation of how the wind farm would look once constructed. We considered that, because the turbines appeared too densely spread and too close to the shore, the photograph exaggerated the likely effect of the proposed wind farm on the horizon and was not an accurate representation of what the wind farm would look like when built. We concluded that the ad was therefore misleading and told SOS not to use the photograph again and to ensure any photographs they used in future were an accurate representation of what they intended to depict.

On this point, the ad breached CAP Code clause 7.1 (Truthfulness).

2., 3., 4., 5., & 6. Upheld
SOS maintained that the leaflet was not advertising. They said they had evidence to substantiate all of the claims made but did not send us any of that evidence.

We considered that the leaflet was subject to the Code and that, because we had not seen specific evidence to substantiate the claims, they were misleading. We told SOS not to use the claims again and reminded them that they should hold evidence to substantiate all claims before publishing and that that evidence should be sent to us on request.

On points 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, the leaflet breached CAP Code clauses 3.1 (Substantiation) and 7.1 (Truthfulness).