But Richard Devereux-Cooke, chair of a group of local parish councils, said the total was a “reasonable” amount for a community benefit fund. <\/p>\n
“But that depends on whether or not the project goes ahead, and if the developer chooses to pay anything at all,” he said.<\/p>\n
Oxfordshire County Council said it “shared local frustrations” that community benefit was not a statutory requirement for solar farms. <\/p>\n
“Although we have done our best to get the most benefit for the community, we cannot force the developer to provide any specific amount of funding,” it said.<\/p>\n
“In the end, it is the developer who makes the final decision.”<\/p>\n
West Oxfordshire District Council said it was working on getting community groups the “best deal possible”. <\/p>\n
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband is expected to make a final decision on Botley West in 2026.<\/p>\n
In a statement PVPD said the \u00a3441,000 commitment had been made “on an entirely voluntary basis”.<\/p>\n
“This fund will be made available in addition to roughly \u00a31.6m per year generated in business rates, at least half of which will be received by relevant local authorities,” it said.<\/p>\n
“This means that, in all, at least \u00a349.64m will be directly invested in the local area over the solar farm’s lifespan, as a result of the project.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But Richard Devereux-Cooke, chair of a group of local parish councils, said the total was a “reasonable” amount…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":229887,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-229886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}