Motion urges councillors to address impact of solar farms on Stratford district
AS the new chancellor made her opening gambit on Monday about planning reform, Stratford district councillors were being challenged to look at their own policies on solar farms.
While Rachel Reeves declared an end to the ban on onshore wind farms, a motion put forward to a meeting of the full council on the same day tackled a different part of the renewables equation that is already having a big impact on the area.
The motion, proposed by Cllrs Bill Fleming (Cons, Bidford West) and Alan Scorer, (Cons, Gaydon, Kineton and Upper Lighthorne) urged the discouncil to put together a clear policy in response to the rapid growth of solar farms. It claimed developers were actively targeting landowners in the district and said that with the northern part of the district being green belt and an area of natural beauty to the west, the applications were concentrated in the central and eastern parts of the patch, with further pressure from bids to Warwick district near its borders with Stratford.
The councillors said: “Whilst it is recognised and supported that the district council has signed up to a climate emergency, this should not be at the risk of destroying thousands of acres of rural landscape that makes this district so special.
“Farming communities and villages are particularly vulnerable when large scale solar panel and green energy companies develop large scale fuel installations, when this will not result in cheaper electricity nor fuel those communities most affected by these developments.”
With questions about how reliant the country is on food imports, they say there are compelling reasons to safeguard arable land.
The want the council to produce a supplementary planning document which defines policies on renewable energy and “addresses the cumulative impact, scale and size of solar developments on greenfield sites”.
In line with council procedure, the motion will be sent to a meeting of the council’s cabinet for consideration.
An indication of the level of interest in the issue was shown at a renewables conference organised by Stratford solicitors Lodders in May. The event, held at Atherstone, north Warwickshire, was a sell-out.
