Solar farm fears (From Salisbury Journal)

Solar farm fears

11:47am Tuesday 25th September 2012 in Headlines By Elizabeth Kemble

PEOPLE battling a retrospective planning application for an electricity solar farm substation on the Hamptworth Estate fear it could be the precursor for a second solar farm in the area.

The site, at Pimlico Firs near Black Lane in Lover , has already been cleared of “hundreds” of trees and an application lodged with the local authority for the substation and associated cabling, the former already being in place.

Last week the applicants sent a statement to Redlynch Parish Council saying they had decided to relocate the controversial substation back to Big Field, where there is already a solar farm, following a “review of the design parameters with Scottish & Southern Electricity”.

A new planning application needs to be submitted for the revised plans, but the applicants say they will “continue with the existing application” in case the former is unsuccessful. In the statement they also say that while the “bulk of the road works being carried out along Black Lane” to install the cable will be delayed until a decision on the location of the substation is finalised, a 1.5km section “will take place shortly”.

Worried resident Geraldine Neame, of Black Lane, said: “Residents fear that a Pimlico Firs solar site might spring up around the unauthorised substation; it is something quite clearly the applicants have anticipated because at the same time as the application for Big Field and Cloven Hill, there was an application for Pimlico Firs, which was later withdrawn.”

Guy Anderson of the Hamptworth Estate dismissed the fears as being “pure speculation”.

Redlynch Parish Council vice chairman David Trick said: “We don’t really know what’s happening at the moment. We are waiting to hear.”