Representation by Joanna Favill
- Date submitted
- 9 May 2023
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
The land upon which this project is proposed is already working hard for the U.K. by producing food. It is not degraded. It also provides access to nature for people and habitat for wildlife. These proposals do not provide any benefits that can outweigh the benefits already provided by this land, in a locality with a long and proud agricultural and rural heritage. Solar can and should be placed on roof tops, warehousing, contaminated and brownfield land. Crops, wildlife, community access to nature and heritage certainly cannot be placed on roof tops. To swap food production on agricultural land for solar which can be placed on roof tops and on alternative sites which do not contribute to U.K. food security, and on this scale, is unjustified. Island Green Power have publicly admitted that their investor Foresight, in their own words, ‘intend to build this site out themselves’. A research article by The Guardian has already evidenced that Foresight Solar use panels produced by Uyghur forced labour. The Guardian, April 25th, 2021 “Some of the UK’s most prolific solar developers have used panels from the Xinjiang-linked companies. The Guardian has found that panels from the Chinese companies were used in projects built since 2016 by the FTSE 100 water company United Utilities, Scottish Water, and large solar developers including Bluefield Solar, Foresight Solar, and Solarcentury, owned by Norway’s Statkraft.” At their public ‘consultations’ Island Green Power have been pushed to answer whether they had any ultimate control of where their investor Foresight will purchase the panels for the project from, and could they guarantee in writing that these panels would not be ones produced with Uyghur forced labour. Ultimately, the project manager for the West Burton Solar Project admitted that Island Green Power have no control over the sourcing of panels by investors whatsoever. Even if Island Green Power have a modern slavery statement - which, incidentally, only came into being AFTER these links to forced labour were exposed. The impact on their project on the UK’s food production and self-sufficiency in ESSENTIAL crops such as cereals and oil seed rape, will be highly impacted by this project. As will the heritage and mental health of the communities amongst which it sits. The final sickening fact is that the negative impacts it will load on to communities’ mental health, access to nature and wildlife will be done through a build that will, simultaneously with the destruction of U.K. food producing land, immorally and outrageously support modern slave labour. This is abhorrent.