Looking towards where the solar farm would be built in St Dennis (Image: Cornwall Council)
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 given the go-ahead for a 32MW solar farm and 45MW Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) on 61.5-hectares of land adjacent to Trerice Manor Farm in St Dennis.
The original application was recommended for approval by planning officers at Cornwall Council, but was turned down by councillors at a meeting of the strategic planning committee on July 10, 2025. The applicant went to appeal and a hearing was held in May.
The planning 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" as well as "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".
However, she also gave significant weight to the "national benefits associated with renewable or low carbon energy" and, in her conclusion, took the view 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 lodged an application for an award of costs, but 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."
An image looking from Retew bus stop, near St Dennis, showing what it would look like if the solar panels were in place(Image: Cornwall Council)
People living in and around St Dennis said during last year's meeting that they are fed up with the industrialisation of land in the area, which is already home to other solar farms and a "divisive" incinerator otherwise 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 members of the planning committee, are aware that EDF could appeal that decision too.
Councillors raised concerns regarding appeal costs and the potential implications of refusing the application at the meeting on July 16, but a vote to approve was lost.
A second vote to refuse was won on the grounds that "installing this large-scale renewable energy development onto these undeveloped fields on an elevated position in the countryside, would harm, to a significant extent, the distinctive undeveloped character and beauty of the application site and its setting".
A Cornwall Council planning meeting held in April this year heard that since July 2024 the strategic planning committee had refused six solar farm applications and they've all been allowed on appeal.
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