By Paul Homewood
h/t Paul Kolk
The Telegraph has the heart rending story of how a retired couple face having their lives ruined thanks to Ed Miliband’s solar farm agenda:
‘Wild west’ planning rules threaten to turn countryside cottages into solar islands
For Mandy Goodhand and Stephanie Johnson-Mansley, it looked like the retirement cottage they’d always dreamed of.
Howell Fen Farm, a remote but beautiful 1850s Lincolnshire farmhouse, is surrounded by green fields and wildlife and offered lots of room for the animal refuge they’d always wanted.
But 15 months after spending £380,000 buying the property, plus another £80,000 on refurbishments, a knock on the door from a local farmer ruined their rural idyll.
The farmer, owner of the surrounding fields, told them he and two other farmers had signed their land over to a solar developer – meaning they would soon be surrounded in a sea of black glass panels.
There was, he said, nothing they could do about it and no chance of compensation.
“We came here largely for the wildlife – we also have hares, deer, wild birds, badgers – and beautiful landscapes,” says Goodhand.
“The developers told us they were installing solar panels up to our boundary, plus fences, and there was nothing we could do about it, nor any chance of compensation. The wildlife and everything else we loved it for will be gone – and no one will buy our house.”
The scale of the planned Beacon Fen solar farm next to Goodhand and Johnson-Mansley’s property is huge, covering more than 1,300 acres of mostly top quality farmland, according to documents submitted to the Planning Inspectorate.
It means Goodhand and Johnson-Mansley, living on its southern edge, will be surrounded by the 15ft-high panels on three sides – with a road on the other.
Read the full story here.
If this had been any other sort of development, planners would have stopped in its tracks.
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April 13, 2025 at 03:07AM
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