PLAN for a major solar farm capable of powering more than 5,700 homes have been blocked, despite a declared climate emergency and local targets for renewable energy generation.

Bath and North East Somerset Council’s planning committee has blocked a proposed 28.2-hectare solar farm that would have generated enough electricity to power 5,763 homes and increased local renewable energy output by two fifths, with residents of the 22-home village of Burnett saying it would ‘blight their landscape with an industrial scale eyesore.’

The proposed 28.2 hectare solar farm would have generated enough electricity to power 5,763 homes and increased the renewable energy being generated in the area by two fifths. But people living in the 22-home village of Burnett next door to the planned farm said their landscape would be “blighted with an industrial scale eyesore.”

Planning committee member John Leach (Walcot, Liberal Democrat) disagreed. He said: “I don’t see it as an eyesore and I think future generations will be even more likely not to see this as an eyesore but to see it as a possible sign of our efforts to deal with a crisis as a crisis.”

Bath and North East Somerset Council has a target of generating 110 MW of renewable energy by 2029. As of 2023, an estimated 47MW of renewables had been installed since 2010 although another 86MW has planning permission to be built. This solar farm would have generated 22.6MW.

Burnett local Rosemary Turner had told the committee she had concerns about flooding and said: “Residents chose to live here for its beauty. Nobody wants to see this rural idyll destroyed.” Philippa Paget of Compton Dando Parish Council added: “The increasing number of solar farms and proposed solar farms locally have a cumulative effect of industrialization on the local natural beauty and precious green belt.”