HELP SAVE
'CHAMPS VERTS'

An application by the Jersey Electricity Company to build a solar power station in the heart of St Mary is currently being considered by the Planning department. It is likely to come to the Planning Committee in the New Year.

 

Known as ‘Champs Verts’, the project includes 9,128 solar panels using up 8 fields spread across 22 acres surrounded by 50 neighbouring properties, four of which will have their daily life adversely affected by glare and glint. It is the largest country power station the planners have yet been asked to approve.

 

Concerned parishioners believe that its greater size and impact tips the scales so that it fails to meet key policies of the Bridging Island Plan. If you, too, feel the scheme is wrong read on!

 

The site, which is in the Green Zone and borders the Coastal National Park, is the latest chosen by the electricity company for a renewable energy generating station: three have already been approved by the Planning Committee – one elsewhere in St Mary, one at Sorel (against the advice of planning officers) and one in St Clement. The current application, on fields bordering Rue de la Hougue Mauger, clearly visible from La Grande Rue, is for the largest country power station the committee has been asked to support - double the size of the scheme at St Clement.

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The objectors, who say they appreciate the need for the island to invest in renewable energy, claim the proposed development is simply too big, too intrusive in the countryside, and fails to meet the tests set in numerous policies of the Bridging Island Plan. The JEC says it has identified thirty-two neighbours who may be affected by the solar panels, some of them suffering solar glare for six months of the year. The eight fields have been rated by the Jersey Farmers Union as being in the top fifty percent of prime agricultural land.

 

Those who are against the scheme believe that the balance between the beauty of the land in St Mary, its amenity value, its agricultural value, the view it provides to locals and visitors, and the need to create a solar farm ‘has not been struck correctly.’