Plans for massive new solar farm near Swaffham approved
The JAFA Solar Farm will cover over 250 hectares of land
A solar farm the size of 127 football pitches has been given the go-ahead, in one of the biggest green energy projects in the country.
The project, known as JAFA Solar Farm, will be built on roughly 254 acres of land, west of Palgrave Road and between the villages of Great Dunham and Little Dunham, near Swaffham.
The scheme will generate around 13pc of Breckland’s energy needs, powering around 16,000 homes.
At 49.9 megawatts, it would be one of the biggest solar schemes in the country, just behind Wroughton Airfield Solar Park in Wiltshire, which is believed to be the fourth-largest, generating 50MW of energy.
The project is of a similar scale to Bloy’s Grove, a massive solar farm approved by South Norfolk Council last year, which will be one the biggest in Norfolk.
However, speaking at a Breckland Council planning committee on Tuesday, Brenda Upton, of Great Dunham Parish Council, said it would be “extremely misleading to assume that there is a significant body of opinion in favour of this scheme”.
She described the plans as being of an industrial scale on agricultural land which would have a “hugely detrimental impact on the local environment” and take a massive amount of land out of food production.
She also pointed out that other solar farms have been rejected due to their loss of agricultural land, including one at Sedgeford by West Norfolk Council.
But Simon Fowler from Little Dunham Parish Council (LDPC) argued that the energy needs of the country were important while accepting the development would “deface” unspoiled countryside with “urban clutter”.
He said: “The imperative of green energy and energy security outweigh that in the unanimous view of LDPC.”
But he said the support was dependent on a traffic management plan during construction.
Breckland councillors voted nine to one in favour of the scheme.