Sunnica solar farm not acceptable says Suffolk County Council to inquiry

Plans for a giant solar farm are "not anywhere near acceptable", the Planning Inspectorate has been told.

Energy firm Sunnica wants to build the project which would span 1,130 hectares (2,792 acres) around several villages in Suffolk and Cambridgeshire.

Suffolk County Council said its deputy leader told a planning inquiry it was "the poorest application" he had seen.

Sunnica has previously said the plans helped to meet the "national need for new, renewable means of energy".

The Sunnica Energy Farm would be split across four separate sites connected by underground cables to each other and to the National Grid at Burwell substation.

As the site's generating capacity would be 500MW, it is classified as a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) - so the final decision will be taken by the government's Planning Inspectorate, rather than local planning officials.

Earlier this month, councillors at West Suffolk Council voted unanimously against the plans and urged the government not to grant the application.

At the first hearing of the formal examination process, which hears representations from all interested parties, Suffolk County Council said its Conservative deputy leader Richard Rout put forward the authority's opposition to the Planning Inspectorate's Examination Authority panel.

The cabinet member for finance and environment said it was "the poorest application I have dealt with in over four years of having held political responsibility for overseeing the council's response to [NSIP projects] such as Sizewell C, EA2 North and EA1 windfarms, major interconnector projects and the East Anglia Green pylon runs".

"The council wholly supports the need for the nation's low carbon future and as an authority we have our own net zero by 2030 ambitions," he said.

"But I will not allow Suffolk's communities to be pushed to one side by an application like this, which has not adequately engaged with local people and businesses, nor seemingly done its homework on the enormous impacts this solar farm will have.

"There remains a very great deal of work to be done before this proposal can be considered anywhere near acceptable."

Sunnica said in a statement: "We respectfully disagree with [Mr] Rout's comment.

"Our [development consent order] application is a high-quality piece of work put together by an experienced project team.

"We have engaged with Suffolk County Council throughout the process of developing our application and will continue to do so throughout the remainder of the planning process."

The examining process will conclude on 28 March.

A report and recommendation will then be sent to the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Grant Shapps, who is expected to make the final decision later next year.

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