{"id":53900,"date":"2025-08-09T00:47:15","date_gmt":"2025-08-09T00:47:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/53900\/"},"modified":"2025-08-09T00:47:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-09T00:47:15","slug":"northumberland-solar-farm-rejected-over-harm-to-rural-paradise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/53900\/","title":{"rendered":"Northumberland solar farm rejected over harm to &#8216;rural paradise&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The plans were spread across two sites totalling 271 acres, one of which would have hosted the solar farm and another for a substation &#8211; with the sites connected via an underground cable.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Mr Mott suggested the substation site, north of Lynn Burn, should be deemed &#8216;grey belt&#8217; \u2013 a new term introduced under the Labour government to identify lower quality green belt land where building can be permitted.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But the public benefits of the solar farm would be sufficient to justify its development regardless, he added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Planning committee chair, Trevor Thorne, was among the supporters of the project. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said Northumberland was &#8220;missing a big opportunity&#8221; by denying the application, especially given the land was previously used for opencast mining rather than being an area of countryside that had hitherto been unspoilt.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Berwick East independent councillor Georgina Hill moved for the refusal of the plans, however, saying: &#8220;It [the landscape] is just stunning and it would be so wrong to approve this.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The committee voted by an 11 to four margin to reject the scheme, sparking applause from members of the public who had attended the Morpeth hearing to oppose the application.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The plans were spread across two sites totalling 271 acres, one of which would have hosted the solar&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53901,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-53900","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\/53900","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=53900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}