Staveley Solar Farm near Rutland Water approved by Rutland County Council

Campaigners against a large solar farm on green fields near Rutland Water lost their battle last night.

Councillors on Rutland County Council’s planning committee said yes to a plan by Anglian Water and TotalEnergies to locate more than 87,000 solar panels on farm land at Staveley Farm at Pilton.

Despite impassioned appeals from residents and a member of the authority’s cabinet, the vote was passed, with seven of the planning committee voting in favour and two against.

The planning authority had received more than 200 letters of objection to the scheme, which will help the water company achieve carbon zero targets with a private line feeding the majority of the generated energy to power the water company’s water treatment works at Wing. A small amount will also go into the national grid.

At times during the meeting held at Catmose House in Oakham, it looked as though the campaigners, which included the Rutland Solar Action Group, might win their battle, but it was not to be.

The solar farm will be the third approved recently and follows the Government’s decision to approve the huge Mallard Pass scheme on the Rutland-Lincolnshire border as a national infrastructure project. The meeting heard that with this approval, the amount of land in the county to be covered solar panels is equal to the size of Rutland Water.

Speaking against the development Martinsthorpe ward councillor Andrew Johnson (Lib Dem), who is also a cabinet member of the council, said as it would sit on a hill, the energy farm, which would take up 220 acres, would be seen from thousands of acres.

He said: “This is a very large and contentious application and it has generated something in the region of 220 objections, which is enormous, So the public feeling on this is very high. It is also an application to place a large industrial complex in the middle of open countryside.

He told the committee members: “Officers have recommended approval based on a balance of all considerations, this means you can interrogate and disagree with the balance and I would ask you to be very careful about some of the phrases that are used and some of the evidence that is quoted because I would disagree with quite a lot of it.

“There is a summary of the balance at the back and the conclusion is that there are two positives, eight neutrals and five negatives. I don’t quite see how a positive approval comes out.”

He also questioned whether the financially strapped authority had the resources in the planning department to monitor all of the strict conditions which go with the approval, including a limit on the number of vehicles that can attend the site each day during its construction and planting long stretches of new hedges.

Committee member Coun Ray Payne (Lib Dem) was equally scathing of the plan.

He said: “I can see what’s in it for Total. I can see what’s in it for Anglian Water. At the moment what Rutland seems to be getting is potential light pollution, noise pollution, light and significant negative impact on the living standards of very important members of our rural community.”

Coin Giles Clifton (Con) said he was against the plan as would impact the valuable landscape and was a ‘utilitarian form of development’

But Coun David Wilby (Con), said compared with the Mallard Pass scheme, the Pilton farm was ‘a neat little package’ which on balance he would find difficult to refuse.

And Coun Steve McRobb (Lab) said that after weighing up the negatives and positives he thought the matter was ‘very finely balanced’ but he had come down in favour of it.

Doug Reid from the Rutland Solar Action Group had made an impassioned appeal at the start of the meeting.

He said: “We are in favour of renewable energy, but believe solar should be on roofs not farmland. What is obvious to us – and the 1,165 people who signed our petition – is that this development is a disaster for Rutland.

Given the Mallard Pass decision and our county’s disproportionate loss of farmland to industrial solar, the council must say enough is enough.

“We disagree with the officers’ report – and demand the committee rejects the application, or defers a decision until key issues are resolved.”

The council’s planning committee had recommended that the application had been approved, with planning officer Nick Thrower telling the committee that all material planning considerations had been weighed, with the conclusion being that despite the negatives, the solar farm should be approved. He said the project was supported by both local and national planning policy.

TotalEnergies representative at the meeting said the firm was considering setting up a community fund, but details had not been finalised.