Communities

Our commitments to your community are:

We will engage and provide detailed information to the local community and listen to their views and suggestions, including the provision of specific community benefit schemes, or use of the site as an educational opportunity, where appropriate.

We will support the local economy through local business rates, diversification of farm income and encouraging as many employment and training opportunities locally as possible.

We will act considerately during construction and ensure all health and safety issues are addressed throughout the lifetime of the project.

We will accommodate needs for rights of way and sites of archaeological importance

We will minimise visual impact where possible, making visual enhancements, and including appropriate screening, such as tree planting and restoring hedgerows, throughout the lifetime of the project. These will be managed through landscape and visual impact assessments.

We will deliver multi-functional land use by proposing co-location with agriculture and/or nature recovery projects for solar and energy storage developments.

We will enhance the biodiversity and natural capital value of all sites, being sensitive and complementing nationally and locally protected landscapes and nature conservation areas.

We will develop on non-agricultural land or land which is of lower agricultural quality where this is available.

At the end of a project’s life, we will ensure full decommissioning of the equipment and return the land in a similar or improved state as before

We will work towards the highest supply chain standards possible, working with the UK and European solar industry to do so.

We will provide a generous community benefit fund at each site, to be accessed via your local community foundation.

We are here to listen – our flat structure means that you can always talk to a director and will not be passed around junior staff.

Timeline

Feasibility:

Initial conversations with Local Planning Authorities and other key stakeholders such as Parish Councils. Our Design Consultants begin work on surveys and reports such as Ecology Surveys, Landscape and Visual Impact Assessments, and Traffic Management Surveys.

Listening:

Sharing our initial ideas through websites, leaflets, and exhibitions, and listening to the feedback. Meeting with members of the community, encouraging debate, discussion and scrutiny. Our plans are high level at this point so that the communities we join can help shape the final design.

Designing:

Reviewing our plans based on the feedback that we have received from the community.

Updated plans and reports are shared on our project website as they become available.

Submitting:

We are always here to listen. There will still be time to influence our design even after we’ve submitted our application to the Local Planning Authority.

Building:

Once the site is operational, we want people to continue to engage with the project through educational visits and we want to continue to support local projects that align with our ethos.