Representation by Roland Sore
- Date submitted
- 10 March 2022
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
I support renewable energy but am strongly against this scheme for the following reasons: 1) It is removing circa 2800 acres of agricultural land from the food production cycle. The UK is already not self-sufficient in producing it's own food and we cannot spare losing further land which in my view should continue to be used for producing food. 2) The scheme is too large, wraps round rural settlements and will dominate the landscape. 3) It will significantly change rural views and natural habitat 4) There will be a huge amount of disruption to the local communities during the construction stage and the rural roads have not been designed or constructed to cope with such heavy traffic and huge number of movements each day. 5) The BESS's (Battery Storage units) are also huge and the largest one is positioned close to a major road and a large residential development which includes at least one primary school. Not enough information is known or provided about this new and evolving technology nor in it's management/control should there be a fire / thermal overheat. This is a real concern to the local community given the risk of a toxic cloud and harm to human health. 6) Should the scheme be approved an understanding of the decommissioning process and how this will be funded is imperative. For example more research is required in the ability for solar panels to be re-cycled and an upfront cash bond to cover the cost of decommissioning should be made a condition of the DCO. 7) I would like to understand better the carbon neutral calculations and to see what sensitivity analysis has been done to factor in things like replacing the panels once they degrade and face obsolescence during the proposed 40 year lifetime of the scheme.