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Representation by Lesley Wilson

Date submitted
13 February 2022
Submitted by
Members of the public/businesses
  1. The consultation process for the local community has been not been adequate. I have not received sufficient or full information about the project in order to understand properly all the implications for myself and the local community. Nor have I been given sufficient opportunity to make considered and constructive representations. 2. As far as I can see the project is a long term industrial development which will deprive the local and wider community of valuable agricultural and amenity land. I have seen no credible efforts to mitigate these impacts which will be total for the local community in particular and will result in the permanent loss of food-producing land. 3. I have seen no realistic evidence that the land will or is capable of ever being returned eventually to agricultural and/or amenity use: the industrialisation of a the local countryside will therefore be devastating and permanent. 4. I cannot see that the harmful effects on the local community during construction (disruption, noise, traffic) will be effectively mitigated or controlled. 5. It does not appear that the entity involved in the development has the financial backing or relevant expertise to enter into, to complete or to operate the undertaking nor to keep to any operational, financial or post project covenants or guarantees that it might be required to enter into. The company making the application is a small company which on the basis of the latest filing of shortform accounts at Companies House has net liabilities and is therefore apparently insolvent. It is clear that there is a complex chain of ownership going ultimately to overseas principals based in Spain and/or elsewhere. There has been no clarity provided however as to the identity, track record or funding sources or commitments of these offshore principals, and the applicant does not appear in any sense a suitable entity to undertake a project of such scale. 6. I understand that the battery energy storage compounds will be the largest in the world: I understand that Sunnica Ltd has no experience of building or operating such facilities. 7. It appears there will be no economic or financial benefit to the UK or to the local community. The storage facility will provide the ultimate offshore owners with simple and huge opportunity to profit at the expense of the grid: ie to engage in and profit from trading electricity - buying electricity produced from non renewable as well as renewable sources from the grid, storing it and selling it back to the grid when the price gives a profit, all regardless of what is generated from the project's own panels. The project will provide next to no jobs locally and I understand panels and other components will be sourced from abroad, probably the Far East. 8. Academic reports clearly show the project is not green. It will create more carbon that it will save, it will have a huge carbon footprint and so will not contribute to Carbon Zero.