No complaints over solar farm

The sun is shining on Richard Green as he takes us around the solar farm his energy firm developed and operates – as I try to get a taste of things to come for Shropshire.

But as we approached what is supposedly the UK's largest solar farm, I still can't hear or see a thing. Suddenly, we are right next to it.

Mr Green said his firm Lark Energy, which operates the solar farm for owners Foresight Solar who purchased it for £43 million last November, was producing enough energy to power 8,000 homes a year.

There is a lack of any noise or anything particularly intrusive coming from the field, which is as green as it has ever been with 600 sheep grazing the poor quality land, and grass is still growing underneath the 132,000 panels.

Mr Green said he benefited from developing a piece of land that was not seen as being of much worth.

He also said there was a limit on how many solar farms the UK can accommodate.

"How many of these there are is limited by space on the grid," he said.

"The grid is the governing factory, you can get as much planning permission as you want but the grid can only handle so much, so the idea that these will be springing up everywhere, it just will not happen because the grid won't tolerate it."

• See also: Energy boss predicts scores of solar farms for Shropshire

He added: "There is no reason why any solar farm should have any visual impact because there are plenty of sites you can choose from so just choose one with less impact.

"The great thing about this is all other activities can still continue going on around it.

"Sheep graze and in fact prefer it because the panels offer some shelter, lamb and wool production continues and in our case the rest of the estate continues as it always did."

In response to concerns about construction noise, he added: "The build process is pretty minor, in fact we do not have vast amounts of building materials coming in, not shifting vast amounts of earth into the building site – the equipment used to build it is pretty straight forward.

"It is a job to describe the noise once the solar farm is up and running because there really isn't any, there is only really a bit of a humming sound when you stand right next to the inverter box but once you are 40ft away from it you can't hear a thing. You probably get more noise from the birds."

The argument for many in Shropshire is that solar farms will be a blight on the landscape, and Mr Green accepts that the solar farms need to be placed in the right location.

He said: "When we did all our consultations as part of the planning application when we went to planning we just did not get any negative comments at all.

"People were saying it is rubbish land and something needed to be done with it."

It could be expected Lark's project manager would have positive things to say about it. What about the neighbours? Those who have to put up with it being on their doorsteps?

Strangely, there wasn't any sound of anger, frustration or opposition I had expected to hear from villagers in surrounding Wymeswold, Hoton and Prestwold.

Was Leicestershire some sort of super pro-plastering-huge-solar-panels-over-its-beautiful-countryside county, living in a bubble, immune from the concerns we are hearing on mass in Shropshire?

With 10 separate applications having been considered or due to be looked at for solar farms on fields across Shropshire – with some facilities already being built – it was of course impossible to do a direct comparison between where I was in Leicestershire and all the Shropshire sites.

Many people told me it was a good use of an otherwise poor quality field.

But I was also keen to find out just how instrusive and noisy the process of building the solar farm had been.

I started out by speaking to the chairman of Wymeswold Parish Council, who said part of the reason villagers were sold on the idea was because alternatives could have included building a whole new village on the site.

In other words, it was the lesser of a number of evils.

Mr Shaw said: "I can say that the farm was actually built very quickly in March last year occupies quite a large area on the site of an old airfield.

"At the time the parish council had no objections to it and no parishioners have had any problems with it at all, no noise during construction.

"It is very difficult to actually see there are only a few places where you can actually see it and it is the largest scale farm in the country. It has not created any noise or pollution or visual impact we can have no complaints about it whatsoever and I think Lark Energy have done well out of it.

"One of the reasons people in the area do not have a problem with it is the old airfield has been subject to various applications where people wanted to put hundreds of houses on it. Historically people in the villages around it have been against that and now having a solar farm in there for 25 years it means that, for the time being, it will not be developed for other purposes.

"What we have got here is an old RAF airfield and they struggled for many years to find alternative uses for it.

"One company runs race cars around it and they can still do that this doesn't get in the way of it at all. It was deemed to be very low value land anyway.

"It is prime land in a prime location so I can imagine people might have an issue if they hadn't found such a suitable site. One of the concerns was the various cars coming in we wondered if there was going to be any noise.

"We have not had a single complaint or comment about it.

"Lark Energy was very good as it offered solar powers to people and businesses near it for free.

"The local community has benefitted from it. It sells the energy back into the national grid. It could have been a lot worse as we could have had fracking or mining – it is a least worse case scenario."

But again, people could argue you would expect a councillor to support such a development.

Villagers surely had some gripes? What was their message to the people of Shropshire?

Prestwold resident, Kenneth Green, who lives across the road from the site, said: "We do not notice it at all.

"There is a lot of Nimbyism out there and this is one of those things where you see it but it could be a lot worse like a massive wind farm which is really intrusive but a series of solar panels is probably the least impact.

"Some people in Hoton said it could be an eye soar or create construction noise but none of that happened. There can be no complaints people if developers get the right site."

In Wymewold, retired villager Steve Johnson said: "You have got nothing to worry about.

"People think it will be visually unattractive but if you compare with a field of plastic cut over how can you really say that?

"The land is very poor agriculturally and it would otherwise have been stripped to build a new village there. There is no impact, that is the great thing about solar power farms you put them up it is there and they don't disturb you." Another Wymeswold resident, Judith Massey, 55, said: "It does not bother us at all, in the summer when the hedges are full you cannot even see it. It is better than a wind farm.

"The only concern that I heard is that it might do something to the value of the properties but we face other issues such as fracking so I do not think over all it affects it but it is better than having 300 houses on there and we do need energy. It is not the big, scary think people think it is."

Village residents Jean and David Hall had similar comments. Mrs Hall said: "It is fine as far as we are concerned because it has prevented them building anything else on there. I do not see what the worry is all about."

What was going on?

Unlike some of the proposed Shropshire sites, the field we visited was difficult to see from the highway or surrounding villages, although buildings on the site would have been visible – so maybe there was naturally less concern.

It could of course be that I had talked to the only people who were in favour of the farm.

In Shropshire, none of the solar farms will be as big as this one but there will be plenty of smaller ones dotted around the place, which can make it feel like more of our countryside is being concreted over.

Leicestershire is more accustomed to these sorts of projects –- villagers who had been through the solar farm sagas now face fracking on their doorstep, a prospect causing much more concern.

Will our farms be as well hidden, as smoothly built or as well managed?

We don't know, but the message from our friends across the country seemed to be loud and clear – Shropshire, you have nothing to worry about!

That, however, is unlikely to settle all of our nerves.