Representation by Philippa Worrall
- Date submitted
- 28 February 2023
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
The scheme appears to have been thrown together without any serious consideration apart from the desire to make money. The residents of the area will have to live with this huge eyesore for the foreseeable future and for some of us for the rest of our lives . It will totally surround the village of Essendine in a way that is unbelievable to imagine. Any other scheme, even of more moderate size would be carefully considered for many years before being granted planning permission. The scale of this is far beyond even the likes of a new industrial estate, it will have a perimeter of 25 miles. This is unimaginable. A scheme of much lesser size would also be mitigated with infrastructure improvements and substantial contributions towards the local services and amenities. Has the actual transportation of the building materials to the site been considered ? The road from the A1 to the proposed site is winding and narrow. It would never cope with the amount of lorries that would be required. The road network from the East is even worse I am a horse rider who lives in Carlby. We have very limited bridleways as it is and the development would ruin at least 2 of them. Horses would be so spooked by the huge panels I cannot imagine my horse would go near them. The new permissive footpaths don’t really add a lot by way of amenities and who really wants to walk alongside and see all around, thousands of 3.3m high solar panels from these or the existing walks we have . Setting the panels back 15 metres isn’t going to improve the outlook and no doubt there will be miles of security fencing erected as well. It will be like taking a walk through an industrial estate, with no variation In these difficult times we should not be taking such extensive amounts of arable land out of production ,when the government is trying to encourage Britain to be self sufficient in growing it’s own food. I understand that eventually the land may be returned to agriculture . Even assuming all the foundations are removed it would surely take many years for any kind of re establishment of an eco system. I understand that although the scheme has the potential to generate 350 MW of energy and power potentially 92,000 homes , in fact on average , solar panels are only about 11% efficient in our climate, and are one of the least cost effective ways of producing green energy. Why not use wind turbines , with a smaller scale of solar panels working in conjunction with them so that if one is not producing the other may be . Wind turbines while still being visually obtrusive can generate more energy for a given land usage and could therefore reduce the scale of any development. Where will all the panels be made ? More than likely, China where labour is cheap, so will need shipping half way around the world to be delivered with all the drawbacks of cost and pollution. What materials will be used ? Is the manufacture a clean process and can all the waste and decommissioned panels be cleanly recycled in this country ? Thank you for reading . Mrs Philippa Worrall