£10M solar farm and electric vehicle charging station agreed for Dorset
The Blandford Hill Eco Hub will be built near Winterborne Whitechurch
A £10M million ‘innovative’ solar farm and electric vehicle charging station with a café and loos has been agreed for the outskirts of Winterborne Whitechurch.
The site is to the south of the main A354 road on Blandford Hill between two existing laybys.
Naturalis Energy Developments Ltd who have named the site as the “Blandford Hill Eco Hub” say it will double the number of ultra-fast charge points between Salisbury and Weymouth.
A café, toilets and shop for customers waiting an average 20 minutes for their vehicles to charge will be fitted with a ‘green’ planted roof and clad in timber.
The company is also offering a footpath into the village inside the field boundary and a dedicated dog-walking area, together with a wildflower field and interpretation boards to explain burial mounds in the area.
Dorset councillors who voted in favour of the scheme described the project as innovative and welcome in the area.
One said the exercise had been an example of planning at its best with the company making changes to take local comments into account and planning officer negotiating to get the best out of the project.
The solar panels will provide enough power for 4,000 homes each year with more than a hundred jobs to build the scheme and eight permanent jobs once the field and solar charging station, shops and toilets are open.
Opening hours on the site will be limited to 7am to 11pm with the business planting extra trees and hedgerows to shield the site and bird and dormouse boxes installed.
Neither the parish council, which was split on the issue, nor the ward councillor made any formal comment on the application.
Objections included the effect on the landscape views, the claim there was no need for an electric charge station in a rural area and the loss of good-quality farmland.
One resident, Tony Senior, who lives in the village, wrote to say it was one of the best suggestions he had heard in many years adding that most of the objectors fell into the category of “not in my backyard.”
Another who supported project said it was a better use of the land than for housing and would look better than the former egg-packing factory nearby.
Cllr John Worth, the interim parish council chairman and Dorset councillor, described the development as innovative and said that it was well positioned on one of the county’s major north-south routes.
The site map shows the T-shaped area running parallel with the main road and stretching back to a track which runs from East Farm to Whitechurch Hill Barn.
The site will offer 19 charging points, six of them rapid and six ultra-rapid with around 30 spaces for general parking.
Power from the solar farm will be linked into the grid 1.75km south of the site at a substation in Winterborne Kingston.