Plans for solar farm near Hereford

Another attempt to build a large solar farm in the Herefordshire countryside has been revealed.

A request has been made to Herefordshire Council by Brighton-based ILOS New Energy UK for a so-called screening opinion on whether an environmental impact assessment (EIA) is needed for its planned scheme at Thingehill (or Thinghill) Court near Withington, to the east of Hereford.

Minimal information on the proposal (number 260482) has so far been published. But a plan of the site shows nine blocks of solar panels, interspersed with a substation, control room, weather station, and areas of environmental mitigation.

New access tracks would also form part of the scheme, lying east of the minor C1130 road.

And though the size of the scheme is not given, it is described as having an export capacity of around 39.6MW – making it roughly twice the size of a recently proposed solar farm at Sinton’s End Farm, Acton Beauchamp near Bromyard.

This was to have covered nearly 40 hectares and comprise more than 52,000 solar panels. But it was refused planning permission last October after drawing around 360 public objections.

By contrast a solar farm with similar capacity, consisting of over 34,000 solar panels on 30 hectares of farmland alongside the Hereford-Ledbury railway line and river Frome near Stoke Edith, was approved by county planners last July.

Work does not appear to have yet started on installing it.

Withington Group Parish Council is due to discuss this latest application next month. Comments can be made on it until March 5, though the target date for determining the application is given as March 3.

A previous proposal for a similar-sized solar farm, partly overlapping the current proposal, was approved in March 2023 but does not appear to have progressed since. The three-year period in which to begin the work runs out next month.