Petition to regulate solar farms hits over 3,300 signatures in 10 days
Plans continue for the UK's biggest solar farm to be built in Lincolnshire and Rutland
Last updated 8th Feb 2022
A petition, co-launched by campaigners against a new solar farm being built on the Lincolnshire and Rutland border, has hit over 3,300 signatures in just ten days.
It calls on the Government to introduce regulation on solar farms to stop them from being built on top of agricultural farmland.
It comes after plans were announced for the construction of the UK's biggest solar farm at Mallard Pass, on the border between Rutland and Lincolnshire.
Project developers say it will "support the urgent need to decarbonise our electricity system, deliver reliable and sustainable low-cost energy, enhance the local environment and be a responsible neighbour."
Mallard Pass solar farm will also "include any necessary and appropriate environmental mitigation and enhancements to ensure the proposals respond sensitively to the local area."
Keith Busfield, from Mallard Pass Action Group - an organisation campaigning against the plans - says he understands the impact that solar farms will have in combating climate change, but building them at the expense of farmland is the wrong decision.
"We are locally being bounced into something which isn't right in anyway for the local area or indeed for people right the way around the country - and what I'm talking about is, of course, Mallard Pass solar farm."
"What it's going to be taking up is an area that's devoted currently to agricultural land, and we all need to eat, we all need food, food that is as important as energy if not more.
"The impact of solar is going to be absolutely ginormous upon us all and it has to be regulated and managed in an appropriate way to make sure we don't have unintended consequences right the way around the country."
See the petition here.