Representation by Bishopton Village Hall Association (Bishopton Village Hall Association)
- Date submitted
- 10 April 2024
- Submitted by
- Non-statutory organisations
As a member of Bishopton Village Hall Committee I wish to object to this proposed Solar Farm on the following grounds- Our village hall has been a nucleus for the whole area and since it was opened in the the fifties it has hosted family Christenings, children’s parties, Wedding celebrations, children’s Nativity plays, fundraisers for local causes and much, much more. It has seen generations growing up and unfortunately said goodbye to folk no longer with us. The mass concentration of these Solar Farms in and around our area will only result in a mass exit of families who have once enjoyed bringing their families up in such a beautiful conservation area. Their local school will be surrounded by black glass, their long awaited playground will also be directly next to the same black glass and the view from their own home windows will be of the same black glass. They won’t stay here, they don’t want to live in an industrial estate, the school probably won’t survive and our village hall most certainly won’t survive. People won’t want to travel to our hall to hold a celebration in a beautiful village because it will be a depressing journey past all of the black glass and we will loose more hirers. The Village Hall needs to earn a substantial amount of money just to pay insurance, electrics, water, oil bills and regular maintenance costs, if we have a lack of hirers we won’t be able to pay our annual costs and eventually we would need to close and demolish the building because there wouldn’t be funds to keep it open. As Chair of the registered Charity ( number 510792) Bishopton Village Hall Association , we object to the this scheme most vehemently. For more than 65 years the charity has managed the hall for the benefit & enjoyment of local people. The Byers Gill scheme will create a massive level of cumulative clutter along with the eight other solar farms already passed for planning in this area. Together they will effectively surround this village & the whole area in glass. Our hall in this lovely conservation scheduled village relies on hirers wanting to visit us & have their social events in a very pleasant environment. The successive solar developments are destroying the amenity ,environment & life choices of residents in this area & are/will reduce the incentive of potential hall hirers to travel here & book our hall.Most of the routes into & out the village will be transformed into journeys through stagnant avenues of black glass panels. For an energy production system that is grossly inefficient ( bearing in mind the very poor weather up here in NE England), it has to be wrong for successive solar factories to be allowed to destroy the residents environment. Our Hall is a valuable sociable asset for our local communities & obviously,a reduction in future hirers will impact on its viability & inevitably lead to its closure. That cannot be classed as progress! Please protect the residents of this area & reject the Byers Gill Solar project.