TO help protect food security, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has announced that local councils will be urged not to approve planning permission for solar farms on high-quality farmland. 

On Wednesday, May 15, a written ministerial statement was laid before parliament stating that such projects should only be given the green light when 'necessary'. 

Planning framework revealed six months ago was meant to make this clear, but ministers fear projects are still being approved. 

Speaking to The Telegraph, Claire Coutinho, the Energy Security Secretary said: “As the Prime Minister set out this week, rising threats around the world mean we must have a renewed emphasis on our security.

“That means protecting our food security whilst also delivering the cheap energy we need.

“We are taking further steps today to make sure we can get that balance right.

“I want to see more solar on rooftops and where that’s not possible for agricultural land to be protected and for the cumulative impact on local villages to be considered where they are facing a high number of solar farm applications.

“We will make sure we reach our solar targets in a sensible way, that delivers clean, cheaper energy but does not compromise our food security.”

According to the Countryside Alliance, conversion of agricultural farms to solar can be 'lucrative' to landowners and tenant farmers have been threatended with eviction so the land can be used for solar.

David Bean, parliament and government relations manager for the Countryside Alliance said: “We long campaigned for energy infrastructure to be sited sensitively, and for food production to remain the primary use of productive agricultural land. We welcome this statement as an important supplement to the recent revised planning framework.

“Like the government, we think there is much greater scope for encouraging solar panels to be placed on existing and new industrial sites, to help ensure rural areas aren’t asked to bear a disproportionate burden in the move to a net-zero energy system. That transition can’t happen without continued public support.”

Ian Liddell-Grainger, MP for Bridgwater and West Somerset, said the measures represented a line in the sand which would greatly assist those campaigning against the spread of inappropriately-sited solar farms.

“I know many of my rural colleagues have been as concerned as I at the cumulative effects these projects can have,” he said.

“Not only have we been alarmed by their visual impact we have warned the government time and again that we cannot go on sacrificing prime farmland to solar power generation.

“When climate change and armed conflict are both impacting on food supplies right around the globe it is utter and complete folly. Improving our ability to feed ourselves from our own land must take priority.”

However, not everyone is happy. Devon CPRE has said that while the government are protecting the 'Best and Most Versatile' (BMV) land  (graded 1-3a), it does not cover prime pasturland (graded 3b), which covers much of Devon. 

“Once again, the Westminster bubble demonstrates its dreadful ignorance of rural matters”, said Devon CPRE chairman Steve Crowther.

“Once again, they fall back on the mantra of protecting BMV land, which protects arable areas like the East of England and so funnels solar development onto the world-class pasture-land that covers Devon and other south-western counties.

“The inadequate and outdated Agricultural Land Classification system focuses entirely on arable land and describes pasture-land where sheep and cows are raised as ‘inferior’, and so fair game for massive solar farm developers.

"Yet the South West, the UK’s leading region for livestock-rearing, produces almost as much food value every year as the East of England. The consequence is that Devon is being progressively converted from a major food-producer into an inert, glass-covered factory for inefficient production of intermittent energy.

“Each of the medium-sized solar farms being built on Devon farmland is around 160 acres in size, to keep within local planning limits. Yet 168 acres is the size of an average Devon agricultural farm. The equivalent of 30 whole farms has so far been taken out of food production in Devon – a county which is the envy of livestock producers throughout the world for its lush productive pastures.”