CPRE Rutland has successfully sought the support of the CPRE East Midlands Regional Committee in bringing the Mallard Pass Solar Farm project to the attention of National Office. CPRE Rutland is actively working with the Mallard Pass Action Group to challenge the scale and rationale of this project with its devastating impact on the surrounding countryside.
Members of the public are also being encouraged to sign a new national petition calling for government to produce a farmland protection policy to regulate the loss of productive farmland to such huge solar projects. Sign the petition at https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/606663
Note: There is a national solar database which is helpful if one is looking at non NSIP (national strategic infrastructure project) applications (<50Mw) as the applications appear on the database fairly quickly. An NSIP application doesn’t become a formal application until 6-9 months after one first hears about it, so other than Cleve Hill (already approved) there are no other NSIPs showing on this database at the moment and won’t for a while. It is expected that a national action group will manually add the NSIP applications in that they know about, and come to an up to date total for the scale and number of such projects. See the database at:- https://data.gov.uk/dataset/a5b0ed13-c960-49ce-b1f6-3a6bbe0db1b7/renewable-energy-planning-database-repd
