Climate change 'driving force' behind huge solar farm approval

Earlier this week Telford & Wrekin Council’s planning committee overwhelmingly voted to approve the solar farm on 90 acres at Cheswell Grange Farm, Newport.

Only two councillors on the nine-strong committee voted against the plan, with climate change and the energy crisis sparked by the war in Ukraine being the defining issue. Opponents were concerned about the impact on the landscape.

Councillor David Shaw, the chairman of Lilleshall Parish Council said his mind had been changed by a letter written by a nine year old child on the subject.

“It set me on a totally different line, it is a matter of our future,” he said. “It is a global problem but we can do our bit.

“Lilleshall will be carbon neutral but we need this solar farm to do it.”

Planning officials had recommended approval for the scheme that will have a lifespan of 40 years

Farm owners Neil and Susanna Harley’s plan will provide enough electricity to supply the annual energy needs of 5,750 homes.

It comes after two other major solar farms have been turned down by the council – Steeraway and New Works.

Referring to previous refusals for solar farms, committee councillor Peter Scott said: “Sometime we have got to start taking the energy and climate crisis seriously."

He wondered whether the committee in the past had only given such schemes permission “when it suits us.”

And he added: “I do not see solar farms as ugly. I think this one will fit into the landscape.”

But councillor Ian Fletcher disagreed. “This development is going to be an ugly blot on the landscape,” he said.

Councillor Andrew Eade, representing the Church Aston ward said the solar farm would be the size of 50 football pitches.

“I totally accept the need for green energy but this endangers our food security. 150,000 acres in the UK will be lost to solar farms this year and this is clearly unsustainable.”

And scheme neighbour Roger Hogben said the country needed to be self sufficient in food as well as energy.

But applicant Neil Harley, who has been at the farm for six years, said the scheme would make the farm sustainable from a business and ecological point of view.

He said that when his grand children asked him what he had done about climate change “I want to say I tried to do something.”

Council planning officers admitted that the scheme would cause some harm because farm land is being built on.

But the committee was told that the benefits of the scheme were considered on balance to outweigh the harms.

The benefits, in their opinion, were in producing green energy and in giving the land 40 years to recover from farming.

But some council experts had told the planning department during the consultation process that they did not like the harms, including to the Weald Moors.

But the overall opinion reached by officers was a “balanced judgement”, the committee was told. Some of the harms could be offset by tree planting to screen nearby homes, which will be included as a condition of the development taking place.