Residents and councils launch legal fight back over Sunnica solar farm plans near Newmarket
Residents across two counties are fighting back against a Government decision to give the green light to a massive solar farm on their doorsteps.
The go-ahead, given last month to Sunnica by the new Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, would see 2,500 acres of countryside, including large tracts of productive farmland, covered by more than a million solar panels and hundreds of lithium battery storage units.
Despite a scathing report by an independent examiner, who said the extent of the harm the scheme would cause far outweighed any benefits, minister Ed Miliband approved the plans after only a few days in office.
It would be built across four sites, one near Mildenhall and West Row, another near Freckenham and Worlington and on two other sites in East Cambridgeshire close to Newmarket.
The Say No to Sunnica action group has now started a legal challenge to his decision and has applied for a judicial review.
Chippenham resident Isabel Cross said the whole process seemed very unfair. “We took part in a rigorous six-month examination process and were pleased the impartial examiners agreed that the harm was too significant and that the scheme should not go ahead, yet after a few days in office it seems that a political decision was made to overrule that expert advice,” she said.
“I feel this undermines the credibility of our planning system and needs to be challenged.”
Say No to Sunnica’s action follows that of the four affected district and county councils, which all opposed the solar farm scheme and have each submitted a pre-application protocol letter, the first stage of potential judicial review proceedings.
Suffolk county councillor Richard Rout, the deputy cabinet member for nationally significant infrastructure projects, said: “The new secretary of state has made a terrible start to his tenure by waving through the awful Sunnica application with reckless abandon.
“In doing so, he has shown scant regard for the communities affected and for the local authorities which would have to pick up considerable amounts of additional work as a result of the project going ahead.
“He was only in post for a matter of days before approving a number of energy projects. It would have been impossible for him to fully review the Sunnica application and to see how flawed it was.
“One of the crucial things he has ignored is the insufficient amount Sunnica has proposed to reimburse local councils for dealing with the conditions attached to their application.
“This is an embarrassing, clumsy and entirely avoidable error by the secretary of state and this is why we are taking legal action.”
Say No to Sunnica has launched a CrowdJustice campaign for donations at www.crowdjustice.com/case/say-no-to-sunnica-jr.
The other councils which have taken legal advice and are preparing to fight on are West Suffolk and East Cambridgeshire district and Cambridgeshire county councils.
