Rural business gets solar array

A rural Herefordshire tech business can install solar panels in a neighbouring field – so long as it also includes measures to boost wildlife.

Spectra Group of Kingstone provides communications systems and “high-grade information security and network capabilities” for defence and security, aid and emergency and commercial organisations, its website says.

The ground-mounted photovoltaic array, rising to 2.5m in height and yielding power of around 50kW, will take up part of an adjacent field, with a single underground cable linking it to the business.

The array will be “temporary in nature allowing simple and swift reinstatement of the original landscape following the installation’s estimated 25 to 40-year lifespan”, the application said.

Herefordshire Council granted approval so long as biodiversity enhancement measures are also introduced to the field, described in an ecologist’s report as being mostly “species-poor” grassland.

This recommended installing bat boxes and bird boxes on trees and buildings, introducing “hedgehog homes”, reinstating a former pond, and planting locally native trees in the boundary hedgerow.

Approving the plan, the council’s planning officer said: “Any landscape harm, which is extremely low, is outweighed by the environmental benefits brought about by the array.”