COLUMN: Consistent strategy is needed for targets

Charity T20 Cricket Match at Horsham Sports Club

By John Milne MP as printed in the Thursday, 1 August 2024, print edition of the West Sussex County Times.

An unexpected day off from Westminster gave me time to meet with Trevor Brown, Chairman of Shermanbury Parish Council. This area was switched to Horsham constituency from Arundel & South Downs in the recent boundary changes. It makes sense as it was already part of Horsham District and I warmly welcome my new constituents!

Trevor showed me round the location for a new battery farm at Land East of Wineham Lane. As it happens the district boundary runs right down the middle of the road. So while the battery farm is in Mid Sussex, the nearest homes which might be affected by the development are in Horsham District.

What has become apparent is the absence of clear national guidance for the design of battery farms. To their credit, Shermanbury Parish Council are supportive of the idea of renewable energy. This is not a NIMBY issue.

But local councils are being obliged to make planning judgements on complex new technologies without in-house technical support. In the absence of proper guidelines, each authority and local fire service is coming to its own conclusions, and they are not consistent. For example, Horsham District Council has just refused a similar application up the road at Land West of Kent Street.

This exposes another hole in national policy. Why are there so many battery farm applications in the general area of Cowfold? The reason is the nearby Bolney substation, which has spare capacity to hook into the national grid, along with the Rampion 2 link to the expanding south coast windfarm. Everything seems to be happening in a random, unstructured way; because although there is a national renewable energy target, there isn’t much of a national implementation strategy.

Shermanbury Parish Council has written to the new Minister for Housing, Communities & Local Government asking for the decision to be called in, but unfortunately that’s been declined. I think this is a mistake and I will press for the Ministry to reconsider.

On Friday evening I had the pleasure of attending a Charity T20 Cricket Match at Horsham Sports Club, as Horsham CC ‘The Mighty Lions’ took on Horsham FC’s ‘The Lardy Army’, supported by John Lewis and many other local businesses. It was a fun high-scoring contest in beautiful sunshine, with a narrow win for the Lions, raising over £1,000 for St Catherines Hospice Crawley, a wonderful institution which I will also be visiting shortly.