Suffolk County Council has said it will challenge Energy Security and Net Zero secretary Ed Milliband’s decision to approve a new £600m energy farm.
The council has sent the Secretary of State a pre-action protocol letter outlining its objection to his decision to wave through Sunnica's £600m energy farm on the Cambridgeshire-Suffolk border.
The letter accuses Milliband of showing “Scant regard for the communities affected, and for the local authorities who must pick up considerable amounts of additional work as a result of the project.”
The root of the objection is the council’s determination to acquire the necessary funding to deliver the solar farm, something it says it is forced to do after the hasty decision to wave the project through. “This means that the developer, Sunnica, only has to pay a minimal amount to cover costs that will be forced upon the council, as a result of their project going ahead,” Councillor Richard Rout, Suffolk County Council’s 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,” Rout went on. “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 that Sunnica has proposed to reimburse local councils for dealing with conditions attached to the application. This is an embarrassing, clumsy and entirely avoidable error by the Secretary of State. This is why we are taking legal action.”
Suffolk has been joined in the effort by Cambridgeshire County Council, East Cambridgeshire District Council, and West Suffolk Council. Chair of Cambridgeshire County Council’s environment and green investment committee Cllr Lorna Dupre said: “We have already expressed our disappointment at the decision to grant permission for this large development, which will have a huge effect on residents and businesses as well as the local environment.
“The prospect of this huge development is of deep concern to those of us in East Cambridgeshire. Furthermore, an error within the planning approval has not accounted for the extensive technical and administrative input needed from the four local authorities affected by Sunnica’s proposals.
“This means that local people could not only face development all around them but could also be asked to pick up the tab for developers’ ambitions.
The Dept of Energy Security and Net Zero says the project involves the installation of solar photovoltaic generating panels and electrical battery storage technology on Sunnica East and Sunnica West, along with associated infrastructure for connection to the national grid, including an extension to the Burwell National Grid Substation. The Scheme would allow for the delivery of over 50 megawatts of renewable energy.
