A recommendation report by the Planning Inspectorate for a proposal of what could become England’s largest solar farm is now being considered by Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero.<\/p>\n
The proposed Green Hill Solar Farm would cover about 2,965 acres (1,200 hectares) of land south and west of Wellingborough and north of Northampton.<\/p>\n
It would also extend to include land to the north east of Warrington a hamlet in Buckinghamshire.<\/p>\n
Ed Miliband will review the report and must make the final decision within three months. <\/p>\n
The size of the project means that recommendations for the scheme would be made by the Planning Inspectorate, rather than local planning authorities.<\/p>\n
A final decision is expected from Miliband by autumn at the latest.<\/p>\n
The examination stage took more than five months to complete, opening in October 2025 and closing in April.<\/p>\n
More than 1,200 people and businesses sent comments to the Planning Inspectorate about the plans.<\/p>\n
Campaigners opposing the proposal argued that solar panels up to 4.5m high could “devastate the Northamptonshire countryside”.<\/p>\n
Green Hill Solar said the farm would “benefit Britain with clean, secure, low-cost energy”.<\/p>\n
If the solar farm was approved, construction would begin in 2027 with the aim of providing electricity to homes by 2029, the company said.<\/p>\n
Do you have a story suggestion for Northamptonshire? Contact us below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A recommendation report by the Planning Inspectorate for a proposal of what could become England’s largest solar farm…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":687012,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-687011","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\/687011","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=687011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687011\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/687012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=687011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=687011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=687011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}