Agenda and minutes

Councillors Over and Todd were both nominated as Chairman for this meeting.  Councillor Over refused the nomination as he felt that as a rural councillor he would be better served as an ordinary member of the Committee.  As there were no other nominations Councillor Todd was appointed Chairman for this meeting.

An apology for absence was received from Councillor Lamb.

At this point Members must declare whether they have a disclosable pecuniary interest, or other interest, in any of the items on the agenda, unless it is already entered in the register of members’ interests or is a “pending notification “ that has been disclosed to the Solicitor to the Council.

Members must also declare if they are subject to their party group whip in relation to any items under consideration.

No declarations of interest were made.

At its meeting on 10 July 2012 Cabinet approved the outline strategy for the development of renewable energy parks at three council owned agricultural sites to include Ground Mounted Solar PV (farms), wind turbines or other types of renewable energy schemes.  Cabinet noted that the outline strategy was subject to further due diligence and studies around planning, environmental, technical and financial issues.  As agreed, this matter was now being taken back to Cabinet for further consideration, following completion of those studies, and prior to any planning application being submitted.

At its meeting on 10 October 2012, Council asked Cabinet to review its decision made on 10 July 2012, in consultation with the Sustainable Growth and Environment Capital Scrutiny Committee. That committee agreed to work with the Scrutiny Commission for Rural Communities, because of the importance of this issue to rural communities.

Cabinet was now being asked to approve moving to public consultation and final preparation stage culminating in the submission of planning applications for solar farms for all three sites. The development of wind turbines and possibly other technologies would be reported back to Cabinet at a later date, probably in or around October 2013 before progressing to the planning application stage in 2013. Therefore, the report being considered did not detail any potential proposals for wind turbines, and made recommendations solely in relation to solar farms.

The Executive Director Strategic Resources made the following points:

• There had been a lot of recent press around the Government’s position on on-shore wind farms.  Ed Davey, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change had reiterated the Coalition’s position that they still believed that on-shore wind would play a part and their policy had not changed.
• Cabinet would be considering a separate report on collective energy switching and that report was not part of this decision.
• On school roof developments would not be able to meet the energy needs of the council.
• The council as part of its Environment Capital agenda was seeking to produce ‘green energy’ thorough it’s Energy Services Company – Blue Sky Peterborough Limited and was hoping to become self-sufficient.
• The proposals in the Cabinet report would impact on agriculture in the area.
• It was accepted that initial consultation and engagement had not been as good as it could have been and the council was looking to improve this going forward.
• This was not the end of the process and further reports would be presented going forward.

At the invitation of the Chairman, John Bartlett of Thorney Parish Council addressed the joint meeting and made the following points:

• The Parish Council were annoyed that they had not been involved in this process from the beginning.
• He had read the report and it had made no reference to security fencing at the sites especially as the panels were quite valuable.
• When would the planning application be submitted?

In response, the Executive Director apologised to the Parish Council on the level of engagement to date.  The planning application would be submitted  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.