Timeline/Latest Developments

• 8th October 2024 &ndash• 8th October 2024 – Strategic Planning Committee meeting refused planning permission following an 8:4 vote of members;
  
  
• 1st October – • Revised Case Officer's report published with some further information and continuing to recommend refusal although his report included a set of draft conditions in the event of members going against his recommendation and approving the application;
  
  
• 13th August 2024 – • Strategic Planning Committee meeting defers a decision and requests further information on sheep grazing and boundary/security fencing;'
  
  
• 5th August 2024 –be Case Officer's report published and recommends that the planning application should refused;
  
  
• 11th June 2024 – Amended revised deadline by North Yorkshire County Council for a decision, with the application being moved to the Council's Strategic Planning Committee for consideration;
  
  
• 23rd May 2024 – Revised deadline by North Yorkshire Council for a decision by the Thirsk & Malton Constituency Planning Committee;
  
  
• 13th May 2024 – Loxley (Solicitors) submit an objection on behalf of 'Protect Rural Husthwaite', stating that individual and cumulative weight needs to be given to the:
  
  1. Industrialisation of the landscape and cumulative effects;
  
  2. Loss of best and most versatile agricultural land;
  
  3. Poor siting of the proposed development
  
  
• 6th May 2024 – Further submission from Professor Sir David Melville CBE regarding the minor planning amendments submitted by the applicant, concluding that 'the Woolpots battery safety management plan is dangerous'
  
  
• 25th April 2024 – Original deadline by North Yorkshire Council for a decision by the Thirsk & Malton Constituency Planning Committee;
  
  
• 21st April 2024 – Consultation ends on planning amendments submitted by Woolpots Solar Farms Ltd;
  
  
• 25th March 2024– Minor planning amendments submitted by Woolpots Solar Farms Ltd:
  
  1. A statement about screening planting to make it more natural, but without giving any detail;
  
  2. Additional comments on landscape impacts;
  
  3. The provision of a water tank in the event of the site not having access to a water supply to fight battery fires;
  
  
• 3rd March 2024 – Expert Opinion on Battery Safety submitted by Professor Sir David Melville CBE, commissioned by village residents; ;
  
  
• 26th February 2024 –Applicant’s response to the 24 Acoustics report on noise suggesting that issues can be dealt with by planning conditions;
  
  
• 23rd February 2024 - Noise Impact Assessment submitted by 24 Acoustics, independent experts commissioned by village residents concludes that:
  
  
  1. Predicted noise levels are unreliable and likely to significantly under-estimate the true impact;
     
     
  2. Background noise levels during the daytime were affected by adverse windspeeds and are therefore unreliable;
     
     
  3. No assessment of the impact of tranquillity has been undertaken;
     
  4. The application should be refused owing to the substantial noise impact.
     
     
• 29th December 2023 – The current deadline by the Council for a decision;
  
  
• 12th November 2023 – Parish Council submits an objection to the Lightrock application and recommends that it should be refused;
  
  
• 7th November 2023 – A well-attended open meeting of the Parish Council discussed the pros and cons of the application and urged the Parish Council to lodge a formal objection to North Yorkshire Council;
  
  
• 7th November 2023 – Lightrock provide a generic and very incomplete response and suggested that any further questions/points of clarification should be addressed through the planning portal. Lightrock declines to attend the Parish Council meeting;
  
  
• 3rd November 2023 – the Parish Council resubmitted its original questions with a request for particular points of clarification and inviting a Lightrock representative to an Extraordinary meeting on 7th November 13th July 2023
  
  
• 29th October 2023 – the Parish Council submitted further questions with particular reference to fire safety;
  
  
• 24th October 2023 – Lightrock reponds to the Parish Council’s questions with an incomplete response and some answers that were clearly wrong. Significantly, Lightrock confirmed that the battery storage and the solar array were not reliant on one another and yet again refused to supply architectural  renderings of the 4 acre industrial complex;
  
  
• 17th October 2023 – Husthwaite Parish Council submits a series of questions to Lightrock for points of clarification;
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• 13th July 2023 - Lightrock holds an online webinar and announces its intention to submit a new planning application for Woolpots solar farm together with a large battery storage plant, electricity sub-station and associated infrastructure.
  
  
• 19th January 2023 ? Hambleton District Council?s Planning Committee refuses the Application. 25 November 2022 - The Planning Officer commences statutory re-consultation which expires on 19 December 2022 and confirms that the Application will be heard by the Planning Committee on 19 January 20;
  
  
• 22 November 2022 - Lightrock and Arcus revise the Application by filing a number of documents including a Project Update Summary and an Outline Fire Management Plan;
  
  
• 4 October 2022 - Arcus request further time to make further amendments to the site area, landscaping and layout. Planning Officers agree a further extension of a 'few weeks'. This means that the application will not be heard at the October Planning Committee meeting. Given that Arcus and Lightrock have been working on this application since early 2021 (when preliminary surveys done), the Ward Councillor has asked the Planning Officers to impose a final deadline so that the application can be resolved before the end of the year;
  
  
• September 2022 - Planning Officers agree a general extension to 31 October for determining the application and indicate they would like to put it before the Planning Committee on 27 October. September 2022 - meeting scheduled between Arcus and the Planning Officers is cancelled at Arcus' reques;
  
  
• 22 August: the Civil Aviation Authority strongly criticises the revised Glint and Glare Assessment and concludes that it "does not consider the full operation at each aerodrome" and that "the suggested mitigation measures are impractical and inappropriate for what amounts to a permanent change to the area surrounding each aerodrome";
  
  
• 10 August: Husthwaite resident Barney Smith interviewed by the BBC - see here. Lightrock quoted as saying objectors have 'misunderstood the proposals' but provide no details;
  
  
• 4 August 2022 - Hambleton Planning Committee vote 10-2 to reject an application (Ref 21/01362) for a 230 acre solar farm in Scruton, near Leeming Bar. Arcus and Lightrock both involved in that application which was refused primarily because most of the site was Grade 2 soil (rather than Grade 3 as claimed in the Applicant's soil survey) and the applicant had failed to show that there were no alternative possible sites on lower grade soil as required by national planning rules and specifically Policy S5 of the Hambleton Plan;
  
  
• July 2022: The Planning Officers inform the Applicant that the amended information does not sufficiently address their concerns regarding the landscape impact and has not included information previously requested by them including more details on the battery storage. The Planning Officers therefore do not commence the re-consultation process and set an August deadline for the Applicant to respond. This lapsed without any further filin;
  
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• 29 June 2022 - George Eustice, then Secretary State for Environment Food and Rural Affairs appears before the House of Commons Environmental Audit Select Committee and confirmed that the Government's policy is that good agricultural land should not be used for large solar farms and that the Ministerial statements made to this effect in 2015 should be followed, particularly now that the removal of sites for 40 years was a threat to food security;
  
  
• 27 June 2022: Arcus, the agent acting on behalf of the Applicat (Lightrock/EcoNergy), filed a number of new documents including some amended site plans and new visualisations, a revised Glint and Glare assessment, and a letter seeking to address the concerns raised by some of the statutory consultees. The changes include some additional planting and the positioning of battery storage containers in the sub-compound only although Arcus has not confirmed whether that area will now include more than the 32 listed originally. In relation to the landscape effects, Arcus makes the extraordinary claim that 'The Site [Woolpots North] is not clearly visible from Husthwaite'. This is categorically untrue - parts of the site are visible from many houses, gardens, footpaths and roads in Husthwaite at all times of the year and particularly in the winter months;
  
  
• 4 April 2022 - Husthwaite Parish Council conducts a survey of Husthwaite residents and as a result registers its OBJECTION on 15 April 2024;
  
  
• April 2022 - Howardian Hills Area of Outstanding National Beauty authority registers its OBJECTION. 24 March 2022 - North York Moors National Park authority registers its OBJECTION;
  
  
• March 2022 - The BBC reported on the increasing national concerns about the inappropriate siting of large scale solar farms and the Woolpots application was featured on two separate Look North programmes 2 March 2022 - CH Parish Council conducts a survey of CH residents and as a result registers its OBJECTION;
  
  
• 28 February 2022 - CH Parish Council organised an initial  public meeting in CH Village Hall on 23 February to provide further information and the Action Group held a meeting in Husthwaite Village Hall which was attended by representatives of Lightrock and EcoNergy. More than 120 members of the public  attended February 2022 - The vast majority of Husthwaite and Carlton Husthwaite (CH) residents only started to discover the details of the application when a group of residents (the action group) started to raise awareness;
  
  
• 17 February 2022 - Hambleton District Council put up more green 'planning application' notices in the villages seeking observations from the public. The closing date was 8 March but the Portal still remains open for comments;
  
  
• 23 December 2021 - An application was submitted to Hambleton District Council (HDC) to construct a 246 acre split site solar farm and huge battery storage facility.  The application is submitted by Woolpots Solar Farm Limited which is a ‘joint venture’ between Lightrock Power and EcoNergy (an Israeli investment fund) , supported by Arcus Consultancy Service;
  
  
• September 2021 - Lightrock (which is the ‘public face’ of the application) claimed to have delivered a flyer about the solar farm to all local households , but many villagers say they did not receive these and very few households responded to Lightrock’s online survey, possibly because the flyer stated that they were 'in the very early stages of planning'. This was not true - a pre-planning application had already been approved by HDC and three months later the formal application was lodged - amounting to many 100s of pages. There was no publicity of this on the Lightrock website at the time and no further public consultation was carried out after the sending of the flyer despite the scale and potential impact of the application.

Since then, the Action Group has had various meetings to discuss concerns with with Philippa James (local Ward HDC councillor ), Ian Nesbit (Senior Planning Officer) and the Rt Hon Kevin Hollinrake (local MP) and in June 2022 set up this website to collate information on the application.