Campaigners: Trelion solar decision could be “the end of the line” for Cornwall planning policy

Cornwall Council’s Strategic Planning Committee will make its final decision this Thursday on the largest solar farm yet proposed in the county — and opponents say approving it would set a precedent that landowners across Cornwall will be quick to exploit.

The application for Trelion Solar, also known as Penhale Farm, covers 208 acres (80 hectares) at Trelion, near St Austell. It comes before councillors on Thursday 16 July, having been deferred at an earlier meeting so that members could visit the site for themselves.

Campaigners opposing the scheme have issued a stark warning ahead of the vote.

“If this application is granted it will be the end of the line for planning policy in Cornwall,” said Rose Barnecut of the Trelion Solar campaign group. “The contraventions of planning policy and national planning guidance are so numerous that, if passed, it will open the door for landowners and landlords everywhere to use this as a precedent for more, and even more massive, solar developments.”

“The bar for refusal is high”

Planning officers have advised councillors that the bar for refusal is high — meaning members would need to identify substantial grounds to turn the application down.

Barnecut argues those grounds already exist, listing policies on cumulative impact, economic impact, social and environmental conditions, local business needs, health, contamination and flooding as areas where the campaigners believe the application falls short.

Flooding, farming and water supplies

Local business owner Mark Blake said the site visit had given councillors a first-hand look at what is at stake.

“Councillors have seen for themselves the impact that this development will have,” he said. “A farm tenant will be driven off his land and his business closed. The sea of solar panels, as well as scarring the landscape, will generate huge volumes of floodwater to add to an already precarious position downstream, where only this February three properties were flooded.”

Campaigners also point to 27 properties near the site that rely on private water supplies, which they say could be at risk of contamination.

The tenth solar farm in the area

The objection campaigners return to most often, though, is cumulative impact. Trelion would be the tenth solar farm in the stretch of countryside running from Fraddon to St Stephens.

“This is the 10th solar farm in the area and will cover 6% of all the remaining agricultural land in St Stephens parish south of the main Newquay to St Austell road,” Barnecut said.

She added that the timing was particularly hard to swallow for a parish shaped — and marked — by two centuries of the china clay industry.

“For 200 years the people of the parish have had to live with the scars of the china clay industry. How deeply ironic that at the very moment those scars are being greened over the remaining open landscape is under such threat.”

What happens next

The Strategic Planning Committee meets on Thursday 16 July. Councillors can approve the application, refuse it, or defer it again. Given the scale of the scheme — and the campaigners’ warning about the precedent it would set — Thursday’s vote is likely to be watched well beyond St Stephens parish.