Representation by Alison Amanda Wood
- Date submitted
- 16 February 2023
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
It is proposed that the area in which I live will be impacted by as many as four separate schemes to develop solar farms in a small rural set of communities amounting to about 10,000 acres. This area is made up of valuable, high yielding arable farmland in a time when we cannot afford to remove any productive agricultural land from the food supply. This will impact not only the latter but wildlife, the ecosystem, local jobs, the local community and the environment. The visual impact will be enormous: my isolated property will be surrounded by solar panels instead of productive farmland for the prospect of producing a very limited potential supply of power. The boundary between my garden and the adjoining field (in which it is proposed to place these solar panels) is less than 10 metres away. I am very worried that this will impact my severely autistic daughter's well-being who is very susceptible to small sensory changes in her environment and, for whom, we moved to this rural area over twenty years ago so that she could benefit from the calm and tranquil environment that it has to offer and that she loves so much. If these proposal were to go ahead. this rural landscape would never recover from the consequences of this industrialisation, There is widespread concern and anxiety over these schemes within the local community. There is no support for them from the local parish or district council and I think it is a democratic right for the local community's concerns to be consulted and listened to. To sanction their development would be to ride rough-shod over the wishes of the local community and people who actually live here.