The Monksfield Solar Farm was today refused planning permission by Malvern Hills District Council (MHDC)! This news means that an important first hurdle in the planning process has been successfully cleared. It is of course possible that the developer, RWE, will decide to appeal this decision. If so, the case will be heard by a planning inspector, probably in around 6 months’ time.

The main reasons for MHDC’s decision were:

• Damage to the setting of the Malvern Hills National Landscape
• Impact on the character of the local landscape and public rights of way
• Impact on the highway network
• Fire risk to residents and the environment

PPLAN fully supports these reasons, many of which coincide with our own research and the findings of our own domain experts. The refusal notice and full planning report can be viewed on the MHDC planning portal by clicking this link, clicking “Documents”, going to the bottom of the page and viewing items 12 and 11 respectively.

Each of the refusal reasons are strong with clear contravention of both local and national planning policies cited. PPLAN therefore urges RWE to walk away from this planning application without appealing, thereby releasing MHDC planning officers to consider legitimate planning applications and alleviating further stress on local residents who would have been affected by this development.

Whilst PPLAN objected to this solar complex, we would like to state that our members are very much in favour of clean, affordable energy. To this end we support rooftop solar, for example, which has the added benefit of reducing consumer bills. This approach contrasts with solar energy generated through solar farms which appears to require subsidy and result in higher consumer bills, presumably to feed corporate profits.

We think that the goal of clean affordable energy is a laudable goal. When we examined the planning application in detail, we were therefore very disappointed to find that the German developer, RWE, found it necessary to*:

• Vastly exaggerate the benefits of the proposed development
• Provide misleading statements designed to disguise the harms that the development would cause
• Seek to avoid implementing national fire safety guidance designed to protect not only local residents but the local environment which RWE claims to wish to enhance

Other campaign groups reading this may well wish to check out the information contained in developers’ planning application. We have heard that being economical with the truth is common place in this industry. Whilst you may not win a planning case on this basis, you may find that public opinion and councillors will be swayed, if only because they are human.

 * we can of course substantiate these claims. We have already pointed out several of the errors in their planning application to RWE directly (e.g. the spelling of “Worchester” in the their planning application form and some erroneous mathematical calculations) and would be happy to educate RWE further on the nature of their misleading statements should they wish to clean up their act in future