Solar Farm

This page is a home for articles about the proposed Kingsway solar farm in West Wratting. Last updated 15th November 2024.

The originally proposed solar and battery farm was big, but updated proposals (October 2024) increase its size even further from 780 hectares (1900 acres) to 1400 hectares (3500 acres). That’s 3 times larger than the biggest solar farm in Europe, which is built on a disused open cast mine. The solar farm will cover more than 50% of the area of West Wratting Parish, and now extends up to houses on the High Street. If that’s hard to imagine, think of an area that’s almost 2 miles wide and 3 miles long. It’s equivalent to 2470 football pitches.

Here’s an updated schematic map showing the overall scale of the solar farm.

Schematic map of the solar farm around West Wratting

This is based on the original poor quality map from Kingsway, and on a more detailed OS-based map they have recently made available, shown here as an image but available to download as a pdf file.

Zooming-in you can see the new area of solar farm (in blue) extends right up to the back of houses along the high street, so that it almost surrounds us.

Satelite image of West Wratting showing the Solar Farm areas nearest the village.

Download this zoomed-in satellite map as a high resolution pdf file.

The blue area shown here is the newly added part, which belongs to the d’Abo’s estate.

Non-statutory consultation responses

I want to collect here links to various responses to Kingsway’s non-statutory consultation, which ended on 12th December 2024.

Scoping Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Report

The scoping EIA report by Kingsway (313 pages) has now been published. See their document library for all the appendices. The statutory consultees have been asked to make comments by 14th January 2025. As of 19th December West Wratting Parish Council have not yet been informed about this!

The scoping EIA is essentially asking the planning inspectorate (PINS) “this is what I intend to put in the EIA, is it sufficient?” PINS then consult with the statutory consultees, which, I believe, includes district, county and parish councils, but not the general public or community action groups.

The scoping EIA is highly technical, so it’s challenging for Parish COuncils to read and respond. There’s some good advice for PCs on how to contribute to responding to a scoping EIA from Suffolk CC at https://www.salc.org.uk/national-strategic-infrastructure-projects-faqs. There are also some useful slides from a presentation about this.

For less easy to understand gov advice see
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nationally-significant-infrastructure-projects-advice-note-seven-environmental-impact-assessment-process-preliminary-environmental-information-an

The key message for PCs is to leave the technical stuff to the County Council and District Council. Instead provide area specific knowledge, and community representation, giving a rural perspective (other contributors and PINS are likely to be more urban-thinking).

  • PCs should not to try and mimic the activity of district and county councils, but rather to recognise that they can add value which non-departmental public bodies and principle authorities cannot.
  • Don’t try to be exhaustive, rather, add value and information the other consultees cannot, giving effective voice to the locality.
  • Start with a narrative overview. Describe the character and nature of your community. The applicant (Kingsway) and PINS won’t know this and the County Council and District Council will focus on technical issues.
  • Only choose key issues for your parish or group of parishes. Use these headings for comments and see the slides that explain these headings.
    • potential impact;
    • potential opportunities;
    • baseline information;
    • methodology.
  • Brevity and clarity are important.

An action group has been formed to protest against the Kingsway Solar Farm Project. There is now a great new ‘Kingsway Solar Community Action‘ webpage, and they have useful flyers to inform you about objections to the solar farm. The manifesto for KSCA says:

This group is not anti-Solar. It is, however dedicated to advocating for our community’s interests and resisting the proposed 900 hectare (2224 acres) Kingsway Solar Farm, which would affect Balsham, West Wratting, and Six Mile Bottom. We aim to share information about the application, important deadlines, and effective actions, as well as provide comprehensive knowledge to bolster the case for rejecting this proposal.

Have a look at their Report for Residents and Concerned Parties that comprehensively describes many concerns raised by the proposed Solar Farm.

If you wish to protest against the Solar Farm proposal then please contact KSCA.

Useful Links

  • The GOV.UK webpage for the Kingsway Solar Farm project.
  • Presentation by Kingsway Solar Farm Ltd to Balsham village on 18th March 2024.
  • Leaflet delivered by Kingsway to households in West Wratting and Balsham in October 2024.
  • Here is the website of Kingsway Solar Farm Ltd.
  • Challenge article April 2024, written immediately after the first presentation from Kingsway in March 2024 about their proposed solar farm.
  • The NSIP planning process – this explains how this large infrastructure project will progress to approval by the Secretary of State. If you want to get involved in supporting Kingsway solar farm or campaigning against it then I recommend you learn about this planning process.
  • A slightly smaller solar farm (2,500-acre) proposed for just North of Newmarket was approved by the new Labour Government in their first week in office (see this BBC article). Essentially the Government decided to ignore the recommendations of their own appointed examining authority – who said that the project should not go ahead – and gave their consent, saying that “the public benefits outweigh the harm identified”. That project is a useful precedent for what may happen to West Wratting.

    The website for “Say No to Sunnica” outlines the reasons put forward by that community action group for opposing the project.
  • Joint letter from Lucy Frazer (Conservative Party, Ely and East Cambridgeshire) and Matt Hancock (Conservative, West Suffolk) objecting to the Sunnica Solar Farm.
  • I wrote to all the candidates that stood for election in South Cambridgeshire in 2024 to ask for their party’s national policy on the use of agricultural land for solar farms, and for their personal views on the proposed Kingsway development. The only written reply I received before voting day was from the Green party, who said

    The Green Party’s targets are for 100 GW of Solar in the UK energy mix by 2035. Predominantly, we seek to prioritise schemes that install Solar PV on residential and commercial rooftops in a way that balances our energy needs with the need to protect biodiversity and our food supply. Contrary to how it’s often presented in the media, it is not Green Party policy to cover vast swathes of arable land under Solar PV, and there have been plenty of instances where Green Councillors have voted against Solar farm schemes due to their unsuitability on those concerns.

    I have since received an email from our constituency MP, Pippa Heylings, who is the Lib Dem spokesperson on energy security and net zero, and is also on the Great British Energy Bill Committee. She said:

    I have previously spoken out against this proposal and I have been presented with no reason to change my mind. There is, of course, a need for more renewable energy but it is vital that planning for this is guided by a proper land use framework rather than sites being chosen by developers at random. In Westminster, I am pushing for the land use framework that Labour mentioned in their manifesto to be brought forward as well as raising concerns on the importance of community consultation on these schemes and for community benefits. I have also spoken in chamber and in the Great British Energy Bill Committee on the need for community energy projects to be given attention in this Bill.

  • The Kingsway Solar Community Action facebook group have produced a useful map showing the quality of agricultural land under the solar farm. Kingsway have said “We understand that the protection of agricultural land is a key concern in Cambridgeshire. We are completing an independent agricultural land classification (ALC) survey to assess the quality of the land within the Site and its surrounds. This will inform our efforts to prioritise development in areas of lower agricultural value. This will update the previous ALC surveys that exist, that are 36 years old. These assessments are undertaken with methodologies agreed with Natural England“.

Simon Chandler