Coffey backtracks on solar curbs

The environment secretary has backtracked on moves by Liz Truss’ government to review farmland which can be used for solar generation.

Appearing before the House of Commons environment, food and rural affairs committee on Wednesday (7 December), Therese Coffey was pressed on whether she was pushing ahead with plans by her predecessor Ranil Jayawardena to make more agricultural land ineligible for solar development.

Jayawardena, who held the environment portfolio in ex-prime minister Liz Truss’ short lived government, was reported to be considering extending the definition of ‘best and most versatile’ (BMV) land to Grade 3b under the Agricultural Land Classification scheme.

Other forms of development are tightly controlled on BMV land because it is considered to be too high quality to be risk sacrificing of food production. Reclassifying 3b land would have been in line with Truss’ commitment, when campaigning for the Tory party leadership, to stop the spread of solar farms on agricultural land.

However Coffey, who was appointed as Jayawardena’s replacement when Rishi Sunak took over from Truss as PM, told MPs that 3b is not considered in the best land category.

While she stressed she did not want to put solar over “every bit of 3b land by default” and is “more inclined” to use brownfield sites for energy production, the secretary of state said that it is necessary to achieve a “careful balance and make the best use of land”.

“We have 14 GW of solar right now, and the ambition in the British energy security strategy is to raise that, to think about brownfield sites, to 70 GW. Undoubtedly, especially the security of income that will come with transferring agricultural land to land for energy production, it may be very attractive to have that assured income.”

However, Coffey said she wants to work through the land use framework “properly rather than jumping to policy decisions right now”.

She also said she is “already conscious” about the challenges of connecting to the grid.

Solar Energy UK chief executive Chris Hewett described Coffey’s comments as “a turning point for the entire renewables sector”. He added: “It will be a great relief to the solar industry to hear that that Therese Coffey supports existing planning rules, which have successfully encouraged development away from the best-quality agricultural land while recognising the critical need to expand solar farms in response to the climate and energy price crisis. This looks like a significant shift from the anti-solar rhetoric of her predecessor.”

Coffey’s change of tone on solar came ahead of the government’s announcement on Tuesday night that it will revise national onshore wind farm planning policy.

Pressed on storm overflows, Coffey told the committee that water companies “know they need to sort this out”.

She also said the government will hold the water companies “feet to the fire” on water quality, adding that the latter have been summoned to Defra next Monday to discuss these and other issues.