Representation by Helen Marris
- Date submitted
- 27 February 2023
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
I am writing to you in opposition to the Cottam Solar Project. When I first heard about the proposed solar farm, I thought what a good idea putting a solar farm on the old power station site. That was misleading, to me and many others. It appears they have named the solar farm after the Grid connection at Cottam power station; and instead of using the vast brownfield site there to construct a solar farm as first thought, they have decided to build a massive power plant in the countryside that will decimate our farmland and the landscape miles away in Lincolnshire. As farmers and also having a lifelong interest in all things nature and the great outdoors, it frustrates me that this proposal has got this far. I am concerned about the amount of land that is proposed to be taken out of agricultural production at a time when food security is becoming more pressing than ever. I agree that not all the land identified is highly productive or growing food directly – however even the less productive land is being used or could be used to grow feed crops that then supply into the food sector through the animals they sustain. Surely as an island nation, at a time with global pressures on food, we should be protecting and improving our food self sufficiency rather than damaging it by taking so much land out of food production. There are surely plenty of brown field sites that could be used instead? What about the acres of roof tops on distribution warehouses and shopping centres? I am also concerned about the size of the proposed area to be put down to solar panels when the Cottam Solar Project is seen in context with 3 other proposed nationally significant solar projects surrounding it – making this, I understand, the largest concentration of solar panels in Europe. This will significantly alter the nature of the area in which we live and work – this will no longer be a rural landscape. I completely agree that we need to invest in a mix of renewable energy solutions, however there has to be balanced approach which I do not feel this proposal to be. I ask that the Planning Inspectorate take the Cottam project into consideration only along side the 3 other solar projects proposed for this area. I also ask that the question of future food security be given the high priority it deserves – to not act on that is storing up problems for future generations in much the same way as ignoring the needs of future energy production would do. I fully agree that we all have to accept that there needs to be changes to how we power our lives – we need renewable energy so we need to accept solar panels, wind turbines and so on in our environment and that will change the nature of our landscape to a certain extent – but the scale of this project in conjunction with the others in close proximity and on land that is valuable for food production in a County that was once quite rightly known as the ‘bread basket’ of Great Britain, is inappropriate.