Representation by Heather Hall
- Date submitted
- 14 May 2024
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
My first comment is that there are numerous solar farm planning applications in this area, we are on the borders of Stockton-on-Tees and Darlington councils and are being inundated with solar farms on both borough councils. This is a beautiful area with many of the solar farms being placed on agricultural land. Although I agree with renewable energy, I also believe that food security and food cost are more important, we have seen over the past year how the war in the Ukraine has caused an impact on the prices of food. On greater research of solar panels, I have found that solar panels are not as efficient as say wind turbines and other renewables, especially in the north of England, we,in this area have not had a sunny day since September in fact we have only had 12 non rain days in that time, this northern climate would make the solar panels useless. We are also told that we would benefit from solar panels in the area, however, this is quite untrue, I believe once the developers have the required planning permission they sell to the highest bidder which is usually foreign energy suppliers, the 6 main electricity suppliers in this country are foreign owners , they are not even helping the British economy. I also believe that the local sub station doesn’t have enough capacity to take all of these planning applications that are being applied for. On a more local note, the small country roads have not been built to take the construction of all these solar farms it’s quite ridiculous. My main concern in this huge development is area F, this is way and above obscene, this area completely surrounds Bishopton, and, it is right up to, without any leeway to the village, in fact it surrounds the village school and play park completely, furthermore the field that surrounds the school, has also been allocated for BATTERY STORAGE, would you believe it. Battery storage has been on the news numerous times for their problem of exploding, now how on earth do we handle that ? Where the batteries will be placed, there isn’t a direct access to them from the main roads, fire engines will not be able to access them via Mill Lane as the parking and narrow road etc is a problem, if they tried to access them from the other route they would have to cross over fields, this would be virtually impossible as the fields around here( apart from maybe two months in the summer) are quite wet and wouldn’t take fire engines, the fumes that come off battery explosions are toxic, and being so close to the village and school and the old people’s bungalows would cause huge health issues if not death, the school and the village would not be able to evacuate in time to avoid this, secondly, fire engines would have to drench the batteries with thousands of gallons of water, this would soak in the land spreading water over the land and into the waterways killing all that it comes into contact with, that is to distressing to think about. Further problems in area F is that historically the fields had natural ponds surrounded by trees and shrubbery, and also the fields were divided by hedgerows, this was all changed and ploughed to make large fields which would be easier to plough and make farming easier and more profitable, however, it created a problem of flooding ,this was solved by the laying land drains, this has worked well up until now, if these solar panels are allowed to happen, when they are installed onto the fields, it will be impossible to avoid the land drains and the land drains will be smashed, this in turn will cause the fields to flood and the water will drain onto Mill lane and other main roads making the roads impassable,( the lane floods now on occasions after heavy rainfall making it only just passable), this in turn will affect homes and businesses, school, ambulances, public services, people with horses in livery etc. Another issue has been the conduct of the developers, they have been less than [Redacted], they have been as awkward and unhelpful as possible, I have found them to be [Redacted] underhand at every stage of this consultation stage, [Redacted], priceless.