Planning and Solar Farms
Debate between John Hayes and Richard Foord(9 months, 1 week ago)
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Richard Foord
The Liberal Democrats in general are, and I in particular am, very much in favour of renewable energy, and I am happy to put that on the record. On solar in particular, some of the proposals for solar farms, as they are called, are too large; we need to distribute and disperse such renewable energy projects so that they do not take up vast tracts of land, as they do in my constituency.
Sir John Hayes
I was going to ask the same question as my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (James Gray). To clarify further, is the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Richard Foord) saying that he is against large solar developments on prime land? Or is he is saying that he wants many more of them and for them to be spread, meaning he would presumably like many more applications, in many more places, for smaller solar farms that eat up agricultural land?
Richard Foord
I am certainly in favour of more and more distributed solar energy generation. I am not in favour of some of the enormous solar complexes, including in my part of Devon, where an enormous amount is foisted on sometimes very small communities.