Home | Say No to Sunnica

Image courtesy of Daily Mail

Welcome to the Say No to Sunnica Community Action Group Ltd Campaign Website

Sunnica Ltd has submitted its proposal for a massive 2,500 acre solar farm situated across the borders of West Suffolk and East Cambridgeshire.

Campaign Update – WE NEED YOUR HELP TO FUND A JUDICIAL REVIEW

Late on Friday 12th July 2024 the newly appointed Secretary of State (SoS) for DESNZ issued a surprise decision to approve the severely flawed Sunnica solar and battery plant, going against the advice of the government appointed expert Examining Authority. These professional and impartial examiners who scrutinised the scheme in detail over a 6-month period, who visited the proposed sites and reviewed evidence that has taken so many years of research to put together, recommended that the Sunnica scheme should NOT be consented. They agreed with many other expert opinions - that the multiple harms this scheme would cause were greater than any benefits.

Unfortunately, after just a few days in office, the new SoS overruled this expert recommendation and gave the deeply flawed scheme the go-ahead.

Urged on by our supporters, we have taken legal advice and have taken the first steps towards a potential judicial review of a legal error.

WE URGENTLY NEED YOUR HELP TO FUND THIS ACTION

Our crowdjustice page, https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/say-no-to-sunnica-jr/

Please donate what you can and share the link to our crowdjustice page. This is our only chance to challenge this decision.

This ill-conceived scheme was very close to being rejected - former SoS for DESNZ, Claire Coutinho, recently confirmed that she had taken a decision to reject the Sunnica scheme “on the basis of a scathing examining authority report” [1]. This decision was being processed when the General Election was called – but was not published in time.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR ONGOING SUPPORT

Ref [1] Claire Coutinho speaking in House of Commons 26th July 2024: https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2024-07-26/debates/DE888DA6-F3CE-4579-9CB6-258AA3EA5222/MakingBritainACleanEnergySuperpower

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Background

Sunnica Ltd’s proposal to develop a massive ca. 2,500 acre solar farm spanning the borders of West Suffolk and East Cambridgeshire has been in process since 2018.

It would be the largest solar plant in the UK to date, stretching around 15 miles from end to end, with over a million solar panels and one of the world’s largest lithium-ion battery storage systems (known as BESS) which have well-known fire and explosion risks. The 3 BESS sites would be located close to homes near Isleham/West Row (East Site A), Chippenham/Snailwell (West Site A) and Red Lodge/Freckenham (East Site B). Alongside each of these BESS sites would be a huge substation complex. These would create significant (and noisy) industrial structures.

The perimeter of the entire plant is proposed to be fenced off with 2.5m high security fencing and the panel arrays in the fields would be interspersed with 3.5m high solar stations (housing transformers etc), as well as CCTV on poles (ca. 5m high) and weather stations (ca. 6m high). It is a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) like HS2, Sizewell C, etc. and would supply energy into the National Grid.

It would have a significant impact on the local environment, both during construction and operation of the scheme.

The Say No to Sunnica campaign is not against “good solar power” or other renewables. There are far better ways to rollout solar quickly, and at scale, using rooftops, car parks, brownfield sites and alongside roads and railways, as they do so well on the continent.

The Sunnica scheme is the epitome of “bad solar,” which would cause lasting damage to our communities, our wildlife and our livelihoods. To find out more please have a look at the following pages on our site...

The Sunnica proposal, which provides an overview of the scheme and provides links to more information if you would like to read up on the scheme in more detail.
The Campaign which describes the work of the Say No to Sunnica Campaign and the reasons why we consider this to be a "bad solar" scheme.
The page on press articles presents a number of independent articles that highlight the growing awareness of the negative impacts that large-scale ground-mounted solar farms like Sunnica can have.
If you would like to get involved or support our campaign, please see the page on getting involved.

Planning Process

Please see the page here which describes the planning process in more detail.