Representation by Gillian Stonham
- Date submitted
- 29 April 2023
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
Hello - this is the third of four solar farm applications that in total will cover 10,000 acres of Lincolnshire farming land. This will take an enormous amount of arable land out of food production. Food sustainability for the UK is becoming increasingly critical as imports from other countries is fast becoming unreliable and extremely costly with food inflation increasing at an alarming rate. Lincolnshire is an agricultural county meeting 1/5th of the nations food requirements. To cover vast areas with glass - some of it over 4.5metres high will turn the county into a wasteland of industrial glass. The road infrastructure is poor with many single track passing roads surrounding the suggested site areas. These roads are not able to provide access for over 400 HGV vehicles a day! It is likely that Immingham dock would be used as the entry point to the UK....from there on massive 16 axeled HGV vehicles will travel down the A15 - a single track each way road already considered one of the most dangerous in the country. The manufacture of the solar panels will be undertaken in China with all the concerns we have with human rights and our national security. Increasingly our geo-political relationship with this country is deteriorating and it is unlikely that we will ever trust the autocratic regime and to create a relationship with China around our National Infrastructure seems foolhardy and dangerous. It is also unclear how we would store the electricity made only on bright sunny days (approx 1500 hours a year) and what we would do with the excess. Moreover these panels are redundant during the periods of darkness which is longer in the winter when we look to use more electricity in our homes, places of work and public buildings! Large scale electrical fires as huge batteries attempt to hold the excess must cause the fire brigade much to worry about. So please before a wrong decision is made please consider using roofs on all building, make solar panels compulsary on all new builds but please dont cover our agricultural land in glass