TOP STORY

The SBW Steering Group would like to thank you for all your support over the past 3 years in many different but all important ways. 

• You helped to inform people about the Botley West proposals in the early days by distributing leaflets and by erecting placards to publicise the campaign. 
• You attended consultations, meetings and events
• You wrote letters to councillors, MPs and newspapers and completed surveys
• Your many excellent submissions and investigative work really helped to inform the Examiners and get them to explore several important matters that might otherwise have been overlooked.
• We especially want to thank everyone for their wonderful donations including some generous regular contributors. These have been sufficient to see us right through to the end of the examination.  

Should there be a need for additional work we might need to rely on your support once more but for now a heartfelt thank you.

 Here is a selection of summary points made in some key final statements:

StopBotleyWest

“The Examining Authority (ExA) cannot be satisfied that the residual adverse impacts have been properly identified, assessed, avoided and mitigated, or that benefits outweigh the significant and enduring harms. For the reasons below, SBW invites the ExA to recommend refusal.”  Read the whole document here.

Calum Miller, MP

“The Applicant’s approach and attitude suggests that they are assuming that national policy priorities will trump due process. If it were to be consented despite this, I  believe that would be improper and, in the absence of the full information sought by the Examiners, irrational. For the reasons set out above, the current  proposal is materially flawed and should not be consented.”  Read the whole document here.

Layla Moran, MP

“It is concerning to see that even after almost 6 months of Examination, the developer has still not been able to fully satisfy the questions and requests for evidence that the Planning Inspectorate has asked for, and asserts that some matters will only be addressed after planning permission is granted. ……I therefore support the Oxfordshire Host Authorities' request for the removal of the proposed southern site from the application.”  Read the whole document here.

Oxfordshire Host Authorities

“Despite considerable efforts by the OHA to help shape the proposals into an  acceptable form, including the submission of maps showing an alternative scheme extent to reduce landscape impacts [REP6-118] as reiterated throughout the pre-examination and examination stages, our position remains that in its current form the proposed development cannot be supported due to the significance of its impacts.”  Read the whole document here.

ICOMOS 3rd Technical Report

“ICOMOS advises against the approval of the Botley West Solar Farm project in the absence of a thorough understanding of the role the estate plays in providing the setting of the Blenheim Palace World Heritage property, and without a detailed analysis of that setting, which could provide clear parameters for assessing the cumulative impact of the scope and scale of the project on the Outstanding Universal Value of the property as a means to assessing whether a smaller and more fragmented scheme might be acceptable that could be seen to support Outstanding Universal Value.”  Read the whole document here.

AND FINALLY: (you may not agree with this one!)

The Applicant’s Closing Submisions

“As set out in the DCO Application and Examination deliverables, and summarised in these Closing Submissions, there is a clear and compelling need for the Project which substantially outweighs its limited residual adverse effects. The Applicant has provided all necessary information to inform the ExA’s Recommendation Report and the Secretary of State’s decision making”.  Read the whole document here.

The Local Solution

Solar energy should be used specifically to meet local demands and directly benefit local communities, not big landowners and overseas companies.

1. Solar panels should be on house, office and warehouse roofs throughout Oxfordshire
2. Solar panels should be situated on brown field sites (Didcot Power Station, for example, which is already linked to the Grid).
3. Community solar farms should be encouraged. These are funded, designed and run directly under community control, and service just the community resulting in benefits to everyone’s electric bills.

And there are other imaginative means of providing green energy. These are just four: 

• Smaller scaled wind turbines can be used locally to serve a community.
• France has designed trees whose ‘leaves’ turn in the wind. One tree can provide an estimated 40% of the annual electricity for a house.
• Switzerland is putting solar panels between the rails of their entire railway network.
• In America, transparent solar ‘windows’ can, experts believe, power 40% of America

The National Solution

As well as a national rollout of these local solutions we have offshore windpower which offers peak electricity in the dark winter months when the UK most needs energy and when solar panels are least efficient. And, of-course, there are other offshore energy sources – wave power, tidal power etc already in use.

Finally, Andrew Tettenborn, Professor of Law at Swansea Law School sums it up in the Spectator: “In the dash for Green Energy “corporate capital is being handed a heaven- sent opportunity at the expense of you, me and the country we live in at least as regards solar power (Government policy) is not working for the benefit of the people ……..

but instead seems to favour a more international clientele.”

All of this means we don’t need old fashioned, large scale, inefficient solar ‘farms’.