The way in which the Parish Council failed to make the village of Cross Houses aware of the planning application consultation leaves many of us in Cross Houses scratching our heads.  

The solar farm  planning application was officially anounced and made public on the 27th September 2022.  The first letters of objection going in from people in the know around 2 weeks later.  Meanwhile the Parish Council meeting on October 6th failed to make any members of the public aware that the planning application from the developer had been submitted. At the same time as this the Chair of the Parish Council was preparing her letter of objection to the scheme.

Consequently before anyone other than people in Berrington Village were made aware of the consultation not unsurprisingly there were zero letters of support for the project. 

The first that the residents of Cross Houses knew about the consultation was after they were informed by the Parish Council in the November meeting that the consulatation proceess had now closed.  Every other planning application in the Parish for years now, whether large or small,  has been discussed and commented on by the Parish Council in full view of parishoners.  On this one occasion the Parish Council failed to let anyone know about the consultation in Cross Houses when they as a Parish Council ought to have been aware of the what was going on - the Chair of The Parish Council is our County Councillor and lives right next to proposed site.  

However, once Cross House residents discovered what was going on Shropshire Council was petitioned by residents of Cross Houses and the Planning Department agreed to extend the consultation.   This was all done by members of the community - the Parish Council did not help in this petition.

Once the consulation was re-opended the community fairly quickly amassed around 200 letters of support - nearly twice as many as the residents of Berrington had managed to write in objection to the scheme. 

This almost certainly had the effect of nullifying any points that could have, and probably would have been made at the subsequent Southern Planning Committee meeting to the effect that nearly 100 people objected to the scheme.  This would have been a pretty significant point to make had it not been for the fact that nearly twice as many people eventually supported the scheme.  Suffice to say at the actual planning meeting this was not discussed as it did not support the case for refusal of the planning application.  

Following the refusal of the application by Shropshire Council the developer objected to the decision and requested that a Planning Inquiry be held.  The outcome of the Planning Inquiry again left many of us scratching our heads as to the decision of the Inspector to refuse the planning application by the developer as the grounds on which the Inspector made his decision did not seem to comply with the National Planning Policy Framework guidance document.  

The developer then asked for a judicial review of this decision by the Inspector and in the FIRST ACTUAL LEGAL JUDGEMENT that has been made on this case the Judge asked the Planning Inspectorate to revisit the Inspectors decision as it does not seem to align with national planning policy - as many of us already suspected.

Just to be clear this is not due to any change of Government or legislation - this decision was taken prior to the General Election in July 2024

There is still plenty to discuss regarding this issue - not least the involvement of our County Councillor who is also the Chair of Parish Council and also someone who will be one of the most significantly affected landowners should the scheme be built.