Plans for a battery energy storage system in South Oxfordshire have been recommended for approval.
Net Zero 21’s plans to site 100 battery storage units along with a substation and ancillary equipment and cabling on a 5.43 hectare Green Belt agricultural field off the B480 in Garsington (pictured centre) go before South Oxfordshire District Council’s (SODC) planning committee on Tuesday, August 13.
Cabling will connect it to the Cowley substation.
The applicant is seeking to have the site redesignated as Grey Belt but has argued it also meets the required very special circumstances for Green Belt development. It likens the scheme to one at Great Barr, Walsall which was designated Grey Belt.
However, both Garsington and Baldons parish councils strongly oppose the scheme.
A representation to SODC from Baldons Parish Council states: “Redesignation as Grey Belt is both unnecessary for the current proposal and potentially harmful to long-term Green Belt objectives.
“The Grey Belt provisions of NPPF 2024 should be reserved for areas that genuinely no longer serve Green Belt purposes, perhaps such as Great Barr, and implemented through strategic planning rather than piecemeal redesignation. In addition, we refute the assumption of very special circumstances.”
The team on the project includes Energy Planning (part of PWA Planning), Barton Hyett Associates on arboriculture and Ardent Consulting Engineers on traffic management.
The meeting agenda is at https://democratic.southoxon.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=123&MId=3527
Image: Google.
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