Representation by Margaret Ellen Hawkins
- Date submitted
- 5 February 2023
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
Loss of productive arable farmland at time when UK needs to produce more home grown food. Solar figures for productivity ignore fact that high initial levels drop drastically over a few years and within 10 years will be lower than other green energy production.Proposed new substation will be an ongoing noise and visual menace. The proposed area is a productive, green and pleasant land. The proposed use will make it a dirty, noisy, useless huge piece of land which will never be able to recover. Soil compaction from the start of the project will irreparable damage the structure of the soil and mean it can never be a green and pleasant land again. There will be no direct benefit to the local community. All energy produced will go to the railway or other parts of the uk, not to us. The incomprehensible size of the proposed site means that no amount of screening will be able to hide the site and its impact on the local area will eclipse everything around. It is estimated to take 2 years to build with consequential noise, dirt, extremely large vehicles travelling daily to and from the site over small rural roads. Recent building of a substation near this site reduced the local roads to a quagmire and damaged the road and wildlife sites. Working on site is said to be 12 hours a day 6 days a week with up to 400 workers on site daily. This will make living and working in our local communities a very uncomforable and unhappy place to be affecting the lives of all the local resident over a wide area. Public Rights of Way will be closed or diverted. Compulsroy land purchases will be made for cabelling; all of which will make this thriving rural community a no go area for everyone. There is no time limit on its use as a solar farm and as it will irretrievably damage the land and lives of local residents. Funding would need to be in place to attempt any kind of retrieval of the site after decommissioning but however much was spent it would never be able to put back into the land all that would be taken from it and restore it to the productive, green and pleasant land it is now.