A COMMUNITY is celebrating after a plan to build a solar farm the size of 47 football pitches was rejected.
Campaigners had been calling on the district council to reject the controversial plans since they were submitted to planning officers in January.
The applicant, Mynthurst Farms Ltd, had been hoping to install 48,800 solar panels, as well as fencing, cabins and a CCTV system, on 32.5 hectares of green-belt land on Mynthurst Farm, off Smalls Hill Road, in Leigh.
Gloucestershire-based Pegasus Planning Group, which drew up the application on behalf of Mynthurst Farms, claimed the facility would generate 13.4 megawatts of electricity – enough to power 3,350 homes.
But speaking at the Mole Valley District Council's development control committee on June 4, residents and campaigners said the proposal was an "overdevelopment" and urged councillors to reject it.
Michael Christopherson, chairman of the Norwood Hill Residents' Association, said: "The proposed site of this application on income-producing farmland on the green belt is an inappropriate development and no special circumstances exist to justify approval.
"This will be a blight on attractive rural land."
Gillian Hein, of the Surrey branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, said: "There is no need for this proposal. The case for very special circumstances to justify the harm to the green belt doesn't exist."
A report prepared by Pegasus as part of the application claimed the plans were compliant with planning policy and would not have an adverse effect on landscape character or residential amenity. It added that the plans would raise the profile of renewable energy in the local community and could encourage more people to install panels on their homes.
Peta Donkin, who led the application, said: "The site of this solar park is well suited."
She added that Government policy advised councils to act on the presumption in favour of renewable energy projects and said the solar farm would provide energy to more than 3,000 homes.
But committee members agreed the plans as submitted would represent an overdevelopment on the green belt and unanimously rejected the plans.
Councillor Charles Yarwood said: "We don't have to jump on every application that comes our way. There'll be other sites that come our way."
Fellow committee member Bridget Lewis-Carr added: "This is too significant a change of a farm from agricultural to industry."
A spokesman for Mynthurst Farms said: "We believe that this is a missed opportunity to take a significant step towards meeting the UK's legally-binding climate change and renewable energy obligations by generating enough electricity to supply over 3,000 homes, while having no unacceptable harm on the openness of the green belt or the landscape character of the surrounding area.
"We are currently reviewing our position."
