During the April Hart District Association of Parish and Town Councils (HDAPTC) meeting, Nick Trew, Long Sutton Parish Council’s Chair, had the chance to briefly share the PC’s perspective and concerns about the pending solar farm plans. We’ve shared this update below to give you a clear idea of what we are facing, and why we feel it is such a critical issue for the village.
Fellow PC colleagues, it is becoming obvious that developers are exploiting weaknesses in the current planning system as it relates to potential solar farm applications.
And as a result, any number of us could be challenged at any time with a significant solar farm application or multiple applications.
Applications greater than 50MW’s are deemed as National Infrastructure projects with much greater planning criteria and are determined by the Secretary of State. Applications below 50MW fall to be considered by the local planning authority under the Town and Country Planning legislation. Cynically, a proliferation of applications of 49MW’s each are currently occurring, in some cases, within sight of each other; and yet there are no planning rules to properly take account of any cumulative effects.
Each of these 49MW solar farms typically requires approx 100 hectares of land – 260 acres – and their visual impact on the undulating rural landscape of this part of North East Hampshire can be very considerable.
We all breathed a sigh of relief when Harts Local Plan was finally approved in its 30 April 2020 virtual meeting. However, there appears to be no coherent Solar Plan within Hart at this time which leaves the door wide open to opportunistic and/or unscrupulous developers; many via remote SPV’s, newly formed with no solar farm history, taking advantage of currently available competitive funding.
The National Planning Policy Framework stipulates that Local Plans should set out an “overall strategy for the pattern, scale and quality of development” covering a number of areas, including energy. Yet Hart’s Local Plan is remarkably “light” on this issue, relying instead on references to an Energy Opportunities Plan within the North Hampshire Renewable Energy and Low Carbon Development Study. But this study is 10 years old, focuses heavily on wind power, biomass and district hearing systems and is woefully out of date. Nor does it appear to give any indication of preferred sites for solar farm installations within the area. So there isn’t an adequate planning framework for solar development in Hart and this leaves Parishes exposed both individually and collectively having to deal with the uncontrollable visual impact these large applications threaten to bring to our rural landscapes.
Development would normally be Plan led but without there being an available solar strategy for North Hampshire generally and specifically for Hart, I would like to call upon PC’s within HDAPTC’s to collectively request of Hart DC that it please give consideration to suspending decisions (recognising though that this is unlikely to be realistic in practice) on any further solar farm planning applications until Hart DC have been able to put a coherent policy in place, in particular for the cumulative impact effects of such applications. Simultaneously, we will also need to impress upon central government via Ranil Jayawardena that they too need to take account of the cumulative effects of these multiple applications upon our rural landscapes.
This is certainly not a NIMBY issue – we are all merely custodians of our open spaced amenities, which are regularly used not just by local parishioners but by a variety of walkers and cyclists from all parts of our District; and so important to people’s mental health and well-being
