Suzanne Bangert

Continuing previous successes with their predecessor company Solstice, tor&co’s integrated team worked closely with Eden Renewables and their consultants to prepare a planning application for a 49.9MW solar farm with 40MW energy storage facility at Leigh Delamere, south of the M4. Planning permission was recently granted at Wiltshire Council’s Strategic Planning Committee.

It has been a pleasure to continue our working relationship with the team at Eden Renewables and to work closely with colleagues in our landscape and environment team to ensure that the development will fit into the surrounding landscape and minimise impacts on nearby residential properties through a range of bespoke landscape strategies. Larger solar farm schemes can raise particular issues. In this case we worked closely with the highways consultant and client team to address concerns expressed by local residents regarding construction traffic.

Gnaton Farms appointed tor&co to undertake the planning, landscape and EIA work for a solar farm at Creacombe. The site is located in the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and is close to a scheduled monument. Initial work focussed on identifying the most appropriate location for the solar farm from a landscape and heritage perspective. We then worked closely with the client to ensure a robust design that would help assimilate the solar farm with the landscape and screen it in close views and from further afield.

I found this project particularly interesting due to our client’s intention to achieve local community ownership through its sale to a community interest company. The project was relatively unique in achieving extensive local support from residents, the parish council and ward councillors enabling planning permission to be granted under delegated powers.

We successfully managed the preparation of an outline planning application, with Environmental Statement, for the mixed-use development of up to 800 homes, employment land, a local centre, primary school, allotments and open space for Bloor Homes, a long-standing client of tor&co. The application was submitted within the tight timescale required by the client. The site forms the largest part of the allocation HN1 Land to the East of Horndean in the Local Plan – Housing and Employment Allocations. East Hampshire’s planning committee voted unanimously to approve the development, subject to a S106 agreement.

The application proved challenging to manage due to the wide range of complex issues that arose, including in relation to highways, biodiversity, flood risk and drainage and ground conditions. These and other issues were satisfactorily addressed through the submission of a number of technical and design response documents, which I coordinated. Working through these issues with our internal team, the client and external consultants whilst challenging, ultimately proved very satisfying enabling much needed development to come forward in the southern parishes of East Hampshire.