Wiltshire Council strongly opposes Lime Down Solar Park proposals in response to official consultation

At its meeting yesterday (Tuesday 4 March), Wiltshire Council's Cabinet decided to strongly oppose the proposed Lime Down Solar Park scheme.

Lime Down Solar Park has been designated as a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP), which means the application will be decided by the appropriate Secretary of State, and not Wiltshire Council.

However, the council is a statutory consultee and so as part of the meeting, Cabinet discussed the council's proposed response to the ongoing Lime Down Solar Park statutory consultation, which ends on 19 March.

The council's official consultation response will give a full reply, prepared by the council's technical experts. While highlighting environmental and economic benefits, this also raises strong concerns about potential environmental damage and disruption to local communities.

In addition, the response asks for additional information in a number of areas and calls upon the developer to carry out a further consultation to give parties the opportunity to comment on additional information later this year. The response, which will be submitted before the 19 March deadline, will set out the additional points raised by Cabinet, which decided to robustly oppose the proposed development, based on a range of planning concerns.

Cllr Richard Clewer, Leader of Wiltshire Council, said: "Lime Down Solar Park is a vast development of 11 square miles that, if approved, would have a huge effect on a significant part of the county for decades.

"We are not opposed to the principle of the development of solar farms, but we are increasingly concerned at the concentration of solar farms and their associated infrastructure in Wiltshire and at the potential industrialisation of the countryside.

"We will be submitting a formal response to the current Lime Down Solar Park consultation that strongly rejects the proposals for a whole host of planning reasons. Our response also outlines the technical concerns we have about the application and recommends proposed changes.

"The application is also lacking many details - particularly in terms of the cabling, plus ecological and biodiversity impacts - and so it is very difficult for us to establish the full impact of the proposals, as we will need all the details before we can form a complete view on how it will affect the county. It's for this reason that we're requesting a further consultation once this additional detail is known.

"Following the discussion at yesterday's Cabinet meeting, we have agreed to strongly oppose the Lime Down Solar Park development, based on the information presented by the developer in its consultation.

"One of the main planning reasons for opposition is that the site contains 30% of best and most versatile agricultural land, which we would lose if it were to go ahead. This goes against Core Policy 42 of Wiltshire Core Strategy and Core Policy 86 of the new Wiltshire Local Plan, and it is important that we do not lose vital land for food production.

"Another key reason for opposition is the cumulative impact. The proposals go far beyond a reasonable test for cumulative impact because of the loss of farmland, along with the fact that the site is next to the Cotswolds National Landscape and views out from the landscape would be impacted, affecting both local residents and the protected landscape.

"We have several other concerns about this application around noise and the effect on the community, biodiversity, flooding and highways, along with other significant planning reasons to oppose the application, and we will submit these as part of our robust response to the consultation.

"In its current form, this development is deeply flawed, which is why we have agreed to comprehensively oppose it in our official consultation response."

To read the Cabinet papers, people should visit our website.