Cambridgeshire’s lead councillor on the environment has spoken out about Ed Miliband’s decision to approve the 2,700-acre Sunnica solar farm.
In one of his first decisions, the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero reversed the Planning Inspectorate’s decision to refuse the solar energy farm and battery storage which will spread across three sites, covering land near Burwell, Isleham, Chippenham, Fordham, Kennett and Snailwell and extend into West Suffolk.
Chair of Cambridgeshire County Council’s environment and green investment committee, Cllr Lorna Dupre said: “It is deeply disappointing that the new Secretary of State has seen fit to overturn the recommendation of the examining authority. While we understand the new Government’s drive towards clean energy, this decision has been greeted with dismay by all of us locally who have opposed this misguided development.
“We have consistently and strenuously argued against Sunnica’s proposal and we highlighted the many reasons of planning principle a development of this sort should not go ahead at public inquiry. We continue to be particularly concerned about the huge environmental and economic impact of this scheme. Separately, we also took up the issue of the developer’s lack of engagement with the community directly with the previous Government.
“What is especially hard to swallow, is the fact that the Government’s own planning inspectors recognised the blight on the local area – in terms of the visual impact, the effects on cultural heritage and the harm to the local economy. That the scale of this impact was made clear is a real credit to all those technical officers and community experts who came together to make the case against this scheme.
“We support responsible renewable energy creation and this Government’s drive to make the UK a superpower in clean energy but we take issue with the unprecedented scale of Sunnica’s ambitions, as well as their approach which led to a breakdown of trust and cooperation between the company and the eleven affected parish councils. The developer’s attitude dismayed politicians across the party divide and we came together to vote against the plans.
“We will need to carefully consider our next step, which will include discussions with the other host authorities.”
Image: NextEnergySolarFund, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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