Representation by Moira Waterworth
- Date submitted
- 3 February 2023
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
The scale of the proposed site will hugely and adversely affect our local environment. It would take good farming land, at present producing food, out of production. The UK needs to keep farming land for our food security. The negative impact on local wildlife and green spaces goes against the government’s recent statement that all communities need green spaces for mental health and wellbeing. Essendine will almost be surrounded by solar panels or the works for them. The company promoting this project do not have my confidence. I question their integrity in still being around in 40 years time to dismantle and decommission the site. The company in China use standards of labour which would not be acceptable in UK. The mining for raw materials, manufacturing abroad, transporting halfway round the world - is not “green”. Solar farms are actually not that efficient as sources of energy production. Development should concentrate on those technologies which are more efficient and less harmful to our environment. This form of solar power could be very clunky old technology in even 10 years’ time, but we’ll be left with 2105 acres of solar site around our village. The actual work for such an installation will cause an unacceptable blight to our lives - dirt, traffic, noise, disruption. The proposed “Compulsory Acquisition” of land verges right through Essendine, to bury high voltage cables is totally unacceptable. This wasn’t even mentioned in the original scoping documents. Overall, this sounds like a project to “tick boxes” for green targets, but it is so inappropriate at such scale, and in this farmland environment, that I hope the application is refused.