Ouse Valley Solar Farm: Ringmer residents ‘horrified’ by plans to build a solar farm in the village

John Kay told SussexWorld the majority of Ringmer residents opposed the location, chosen by community interest company OVESCO, for a solar farm in the village.

Mr Kay said: “I’m opposed to the location that has been selected.

“It’s been selected by people who don’t live in Ringmer, who have no idea how important the site they have chosen is and how damaging a solar farm at that site would be to the people that live here.”

Plans for Ouse Valley Solar Farm were submitted to the Lewes District Council by OVESCO on May 19, 2022, to build on the land east of Uckfield Road.

Mr Kay said the ‘pleasant’ countryside at this site would be ‘traumatically altered’ by having a solar farm.

The Ringmer Parish councillor said: “Ringmer doesn't have any accessible countryside that you can just roam around into, but what we do have is two lanes alongside it. Which is Norlington Lane and Potato Lane.

“These are where Ringmer people go for a bike ride or they go for a walk with the dog. Related to the public footpaths network that some people also use. If it's wet and you don’t want to walk cross country, there are places that people go.

“These are very pleasant places to go for a walk and that experience would be fairly traumatically altered by having a solar farm there.”

The solar farm is expected to generate up to 17MW of clean renewable energy, the equivalent to the annual electrical needs of approximately 4,800 family homes.

Lewes MP Maria Caulfield claimed the solar farm would take out highly-valuable agricultural land at a time when the district needed to increase domestic food production.

In response, OVESCO director Chris Rowland said the solar farm would increase the biodiversity on the land by 234%.

Chris said: “We have done testing on the site, we’ve taken core samples of the soil from all over that site. The results revealed that the soil was grade 3b, which is suitable for a solar farm.

"In the past it has been intensively farmed. Last year it was for sweetcorn which is not the greatest crop, in fact it sucks all the nutrients out of the ground and if you go there, put your hand in the soil and have a look at it, there’s nothing living in there.

“Whereas if you go to a solar farm - there are bees, wildlife and flowers growing around the perimeter of the solar farms and underneath the solar farm as well.

“It should increase biodiversity by 234%, so there will be things to encourage wildlife like bats and birds.

“I completely understand that food security is important. Energy and food security are at the forefront of the news. It will power 4,800 homes and we need that electricity to power our fridges, freezers, air conditioning units in the summer, and provide energy to process food which we all eat at the end of the day.”

John Kay said that farmland is by nature not biodiverse, so he believes Mr Rowland’s point a ‘non-claim’, stating that building the solar farm on this productive agricultural land would affect the UK’s future food security.

Mr Kay said: “This land is productive farmland and they [OVESCO] are saying it isn't - but it is. We obviously need energy security, but we also need to maintain food security.

“The events in Ukraine and Russia have shown us how important that is, as well as the energy side of it.

"If you think Britain should be self-sufficient in food, rather than just relying on importing it all from people who might not be willing to sell it to us in the future, then you have to accept arable land.

“But then arable land is not bio-diverse by definition, so that is a non-claim.”

OVESCO also said residents were invited to three public consultation events that were held in November 2021, where the company’s project team presented plans and took questions regarding the draft proposal.

John Kay told SussexWorld the solar farm plans were ‘hidden’ from Ringmer Parish Council until Autumn 2021.

He also said OVESCO told the parish council that only one village resident was opposed to the plans, which Mr Kay described as ‘simply untrue’.

Mr Kay said: “ We [the parish council] found out about the solar farm plans last autumn. The location was hidden from the parish council and just referred to as the site in the documents, without disclosing where this was.

“Later, OVESCO came to the Ringmer Parish Council and told us their plans. They also told us that only a single resident was opposed to the plans, because he was trying to sell his house.

“I thought this seemed strange and when I spoke to residents about this, they hadn't been approached by OVESCO, so what they’ve told us was simply untrue.

“That’s what they told us and I'm sure they told Lewes District Council the same. How they thought they would get away with this I don't know.

"Since then OVESCO has been running an active campaign to get people across the world to write into LDC to support this proposal - without any explanation about what the real issues are.”

To learn more about the solar farm proposals click here

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