Representation by Kate Skelton
- Date submitted
- 17 February 2023
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
I object to the Cottam Solar Project which is one of four giant solar farm proposals in West Lindsey, Lincolnshire. Our family home of 20 years and the personally funded wildlife project we have been developing would be totally dominated by these imposing alien developments on the surrounding beautiful and productive farmland. Our life choice was to move into the countryside build a house and raise a family. My husband has put every spare minute and every penny into our home, we have forsaken foreign holidays, new cars and other mainstream luxuries to persue this lifestyle. Our home is our life and this would all change with these industrial solar farm proposals that are to be all around our property, these haphazard solar panel parcels would be visible in every direction.. this is not just one or two fields, it is thousands of acres on rolling countryside. This place would be a depressing and disfigured place to live for the rest of our lives. Surely the human cost comes into this! and 40 years is certainly not temporary? During consultation we did everything the developers asked of us including allowing access on to our property.. We were in the end let down by their averice and their promises were broken. Island Green Power are inhuman to think that their vast proposal around here would be anything but ruinous to our lives. The whole landscape around here would be dominated by solar panel structures of an insane 4.5 metres in height! not to mention huge electrical transformers and dangerous battery storage compounds, also to be situated off our narrow country lane. the cumulative 10,000 acres would be an immense construction site, this would cover an area the size of Lincoln! Would people visit or want to stay in an area such as this? Our B&B plans and retirement income route would be wrecked! I am extremely dissapointed that the developers only offer new planting as mitigation that would take twenty years to have any effect at all. Their landscaping skills are amature to say the least. Browsing animals channelled around these vast areas would decimate new and existing planting so the outcome in the end would be zero mitigation backed up by excuses? I appeal to the planning inspectorate to stop these crushing and ineffective developments in the countryside and on proven farmland. Total changes of landscape and land use on this scale is not acceptable and would destroy rural families and communities. Kind regards, Kate Skelton.