It is true that judicial reviews have been exploited to hold up infrastructure schemes, often on environmental grounds, such as the presence of a rare bat or a great crested newt. The Hinkley Point nuclear power plant developers in Somerset had to install a £50m “fish disco” as an acoustic deterrent to marine life.
The Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 seeks to end the practice of serial, meritless legal challenges clogging up the courts. Unquestionably, reforms are needed to speed up necessary infrastructure projects, housing, reservoirs and brownfield schemes.
But it is reckless to target agricultural land in this way. If anything, preserving farmland to underpin the country’s food security falls into the category of Critical National Importance – more so, indeed, than using it to provide energy that can be obtained by other methods.
UK farms now produce less than 65 per cent of food bought domestically, down from 78 per cent in 1984. Some of England’s best growing and grazing fields are being lost to solar panels, with nearly two-thirds of the biggest solar farms now built on productive agricultural land.
An analysis by the CPRE, the countryside charity, showed that 59 per cent of the country’s 38 operational solar developments generating over 30 megawatts were on farmland, and a third of the land covered was rated “best and most versatile” (BMV) for agriculture.
Three major developments – Sutton Bridge in Lincolnshire, Goosehall in East Cambridgeshire, and Black Peak Farm in South Cambridgeshire – are built entirely on BMV land, removing valuable soils from food production for decades.