Overall Advice
For good overall advice about how a Parish Council should cope with an NSIP that will affect their parish so the useful document published by SALC called “Getting to Grips with NSIPs“.
Project Consultation
The Kingsway NSIP has two rounds of consultation. The non-statutory consultation in December 2024 and the statutory consultation in November 2025. The role of Parish Councils in these consultations is to tell the developer what issues are of concern to your community and to suggest how you would like the impact to be mitigated. The advice I gave to our parishioners can be found on this webpage. The key message was:
Do start by telling Kingsway your overall feelings about the solar farm, but I recommend keeping your objections brief. Kingsway Solar Ltd will not really be listening to straightforward objections, so your time spent on that will really be wasted.
For this consultation it is best to focus on giving constructive suggestions that could influence the design for the better. It will be most effective if you say “it should be like this because …” rather than “if it’s like that it’ll be terrible”.
If describing a particular location, e.g., “the view from my house”, a particular field, or a particular footpath, give enough detail so that it can be identified. Include as much detail as possible and cover anything that may affect your day-to-day life.
The consultations are our best opportunity to influence the design of the solar farm so that if it does go ahead its impact on our lives will be minimised.
Although Kingsway have a form that you can fill in to give them your comments, either online or as a paper copy, you can send them your comments in any format you choose. All communication will count equally. You may prefer to send them a free-form email/letter because you feel their form will not allow you to describe what you want to happen in enough detail.
Scoping EIA
The scoping EIA was essentially the developer saying to 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 includes the 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.
Simon Chandler
West Wratting Parish Council