Shropshire Star

Shropshire anti-solar farm campaigners welcome cut in subsidies

Anti-solar farm campaigners today welcomed a decision to slash subsidies to farmers who use fields for solar panels.

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With a rash of applications now being decided by county planners, the Government's announcement has been taken as a sign that the tide of opinion is turning against using greenbelt land for major renewable energy developments.

But supporters of the technology have said a statement by Environmental Secretary Elizabeth Truss that solar farms on fields would hurt British food production was a "sweeping generalisation".

Mrs Truss has announced that from January 2015 farmers who use fields for solar panels will not be eligible for any farm subsidy payments through the Common Agricultural Policy for that land.

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The move is to encourage farmers to keep farming rather than putting land out of agricultural use.

She said: "Farming is what our farms are for and it is what keeps our landscape beautiful.

Livestock

"I am committed to food production in this country and it makes my heart sink to see row upon row of solar panels where once there was a field of wheat or grassland for livestock to graze. That is why I am scrapping farming subsidies for solar fields."

The move comes after a decision to bar solar farms above 5MW from being eligible for Renewables Obligation subsidy from April next year.

Peter van Duijvenvoorde, chair of campaign group Save South Shropshire Countryside, said Government policy was turning towards the idea that solar panels should be on the rooftops of buildings or brownfield sites, not farmland.

The group successfully objected to major applications at Whitton, near Ludlow, and Acton Scott, near Church Stretton, which were turned down by Shropshire Council Planners last week, and are still fighting a similar proposals in Tasley, near Bridgnorth, and Neen Sollars, near Cleobury Mortimer.

John Phillips, a fellow Save South Shropshire Countryside member, said politicians across parties were starting to "get off the fence" on solar farms.

"I thoroughly agree with Mrs Truss's statement," he said.

But Mike Hymas, secretary of Stretton Climate Care, a green group that supported the application for a 54-acre solar farm at Acton Scott, said: "We don't accept the statement by Liz Truss that they cause untold damage wherever they are.

"Farmers clearly shouldn't be getting agricultural subsidy if the land is not being used for agriculture.

"But in the Acton Scott case, for example, I feel confident it would not have affected agriculture – they would have carried on with sheep farming underneath the panels."

He said the decisions should be left to local planning authorities who were equipped to deal with solar farm applications on a case-by-case basis, without Government interference – even if it meant occasionally turning down a good scheme like the Henley Bank solar farm in Acton Scott.

However, the coalition Government was not being consistent in its attitude, with ministers making decisions at odds with current national policy, he said.

"Eric Pickles has been calling in plans for solar and wind farms and refusing them against the views of the Planning Inspectorate, which seems to be part of the tensions in government over these things," he said.

Work has already started on a solar farm on a site at Wheat Leasows in Hadley, Telford. Telford & Wrekin Council hopes it will create enough power for 800 homes.

North Shropshire MP and former Government minister Owen Paterson this week declared that Britain's energy policy is a "slave to flawed climate action".

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