Hawksworth and Thoroton residents object to huge solar farm plan

Concerns have been raised that a quiet country village could soon become more like an industrial estate if plans for a new solar farm are given the go ahead.

Plans for a solar farm on 233 acres of land close to Hawksworth and Thoroton have been submitted to Rushcliffe Borough Council.

Although it would help boost the council's green energy targets, opponents from Hawksworth and Thoroton Action Group fear the borough and Nottinghamshire becoming dominated by solar farms.

One of the main concerns is that the the solar farm is proposed to be built upon prime agricultural land when other more suitable locations exist.

Neil Smith, of Hawksworth and Thoroton Action Group, said: "It's a very rural area. If you stand in the middle of it you might see the occasional house but it's mainly just fields and woodland as far as the eye can see.

"What this application will do is basically turn top quality agricultural farmland into an industrial estate.

"To put it into context, you can get 1.5m loaves of bread off that land a year and that will be lost forever.

"It will basically be 40 years without any nutrients going into the ground, which mean it will then become useless.

"We will be losing agricultural land. The country is losing it at about 1% a year and we are already importing about 50% of our food as a nation which will only increase."

Fears that the area around Grantham could be overhwhelmed by large solar farms have been raised over the past few years with solar farms in various stages of development at Gonerby Moor, Foston, Barkeston-le-Vale and Folkingham.

The action group is not opposed to green energy but feel that solar is not the most efficient use of the land.

"The energy you would get from that is equivalent to two wind turbines" said Neil.

"It's not the right technology and it's in the wrong place.

"If they had wind turbines, the land could still be farmed and the same amount of energy would be produced. So why would you cover great farm land with thousands of solar panels?

"This applies to most agricultural places such as the recent plans for another solar farm up in Norwell.

"The council could from today say that every new build house must have solar panels on it and in five years they would have far more than would be placed in these fields.

"It also has the added benefit of generating electricity straight to the user rather than having to worry about storage and losing energy as it is transferred."

There was also concern over how the plans would affect the status of conservation areas and registered heritage farmland.

Neil said: "This will give precedent to every landowner who wants to sell and make some money because if this goes ahead there will be no reason not to turn land into solar farms.

"The whole of the land north and east of Nottingham could be turned into solar farms because there would be no planning restrictions or reasons to stop that from happening.

"The alternative is that in Rushcliffe itself and Greater Nottinghamshire as a whole there are a number of brownfield sites on old spoil heaps from the mines, which can't be used to grow crops but would be perfect for this type of development."

"For the villages here, this application will put panels closer to houses than any other application in the county.

"The farm will come right up to the village boundary in Hawksworth and will only be about 50 yards from houses in Thoroton.

"It will go from being a small agricultural and rural community to being right in the middle of an industrial estate."

In the planning statement submitted to Ruschliffe borough Council for the Longhedge Solar Farm, the applicant said: "During operation, the Proposed Development Site will be in ‘dual-use’ as small livestock such as sheep may continue to graze the site beneath and between arrays, thereby retaining agricultural activity while introducing new economic activity to the area.

"The intention is that the site can be returned to its former state at the expiry of the Proposed Developments lifespan.

"All elements of the Proposed Development will be completely removed and either recycled or reused."