A solar farm will be built across 18 fields in Cornish clay country, despite being refused at a Cornwall Council meeting last year.
A Government planning inspector has overturned the councillors' decision and approved a 32MW solar farm and 45MW Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) on 61.5 hectares of land next to Trerice Manor Farm in St Dennis.
Planning officers at Cornwall Council had recommended the application for approval, but it was turned down by councillors at a meeting of the strategic planning committee on July 10, 2025. The applicant appealed and a hearing was held in May.
Inspector Hayley Butcher published her ruling on Wednesday, August 12. She acknowledged that the solar array will have a "significant adverse impact on the local landscape" and "limited harm as a result of the long-term loss of best and most versatile land, and harm at the lower end of 'less than substantial' harm to the setting of two designated heritage assets".
But she gave significant weight to the "national benefits associated with renewable or low carbon energy" and concluded that the "totality of benefits of the proposal outweighed the harms".
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The applicant, Trerice Solar Farm Limited, an offshoot of Norwegian-owned Statkraft, also asked for an award of costs, but that request was refused.
Ms Butcher stated: "Local residents and councillors raised pertinent matters in respect of character and appearance and heritage, amongst other things. Even though my final decision was to allow the development, it was not, in my view, a case which could be described as one which should clearly have been permitted, as the various matters raised needed to be weighed in the planning balance.
"Members are, in any event, entitled to disagree with officer's recommendations and, in this case, they did so on reasonable grounds and engaged proactively throughout the appeal process."
People living in and around St Dennis said at last year's meeting that they are fed up with the industrialisation of land in the area, which already has other solar farms and a "divisive" incinerator known as the Cornwall Energy Recovery Centre.
The appeal decision comes after another large solar farm was refused by the council's strategic planning committee last month. Energy company EDF had applied to build a solar farm across 19 agricultural fields at Trelion Farm, near St Stephen, not far from St Dennis. Campaigners against that solar farm, as well as planning committee members, know that EDF could appeal that decision too.
At the meeting on July 16, councillors raised concerns about appeal costs and the potential implications of refusing the application, but a vote to approve was lost. A second vote to refuse was won on the grounds that "installing this large-scale renewable
Solar Farm on 18 Cornwall Fields Gets Go-Ahead After Refusal