A proposal for a large-scale solar farm should be rejected due to its “cumulative landscape impact” while a similar scheme about 2.5km away should be approved as a single carriageway road and a railway line serve as “visual barriers”, planning officials have said.
North Yorkshire Council officers have issued contrasting recommendations over two renewable energy schemes on each side of the A19 north of Easingwold ahead of the authority’s strategic planning committee meeting on Tuesday (August 13) to consider the applications.
The Woolpots Solar Farm Ltd proposal, off a lane between the A19 and Husthwaite, could see a 32MWh of energy produced across a 51ha site, developer Anthony Bindle’s 49.9MWh venture would be across a 94ha site west of the arterial route and the East Coast Main Line, near Raskelf.
If both schemes are approved by the council – which has declared a climate emergency and raised concerns over constraints and delays to renewable energy projects being brought forward – they could generate sufficient energy to power 25,000 homes.
Both schemes have attracted significant local opposition over their impacts on the rural area and follow the Energy Security minister earlier this year stating the concentration of solar projects in specific areas was “concerning”.
Alongside more than 100 objections from residents, Raskelf Parish Council said the 49.9MWh scheme’s scale and location would have an adverse impact on the surrounding environment and landscape beside Brafferton Spring Wood, a designated Site of Importance for Nature Conservation and nearby Pilmoor Site of Special Scientific Importance.
Other objectors have highlighted the cumulative effect of the proposal when combined with other local sites either operating or in the planning process, totalling 244 hectares, including Boscar Grange near Raskelf, Woolpots Solar at Husthwaite and Peter Hill at Husthwaite.
In one objection, a resident wrote: “If these all go ahead then within a 30sq km site centred over Raskelf eight per cent of all land will be occupied by solar panels.”
Husthwaite Parish Council said the proposal on the east side of the A19 would harm the environment and landscape and also highlighted the cumulative impact of the development alongside other solar farms, saying it would “constitute a visually intrusive industrialisation of the rural landscape” beside a designated National Landscape.
Planning officers said they considered harmful impacts of the smaller scale scheme at Husthwaite, including landscape impacts and use of top grade farmland, to be “unacceptable” when considered individually against the substantial public benefits of the proposals.
Referring to the proposal near Raskelf, officers said it was “visually separate
from the other solar developments… being located more than 2.5km to
the west”.
The officer’s report added: “There are also visual barriers such as the A19 and the East Coast Main Line between the sites. The cumulative impact is therefore not considered to be harmful in this case.”
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