The Long Read: South Brooks Solar Farm Consultation Opens as Romney Marsh Drainage Fight Deepens

EDF power solutions UK and PS Renewables say South Brooks Solar Farm could power more than 140,000 homes a year. Campaigners say residents are being asked how to soften the damage, not whether the damage should happen at all. Between those two positions sits the harder story: farmers are under brutal pressure, solar rent can look like a lifeline, and Romney Marsh isn’t empty land near a useful plug socket. It’s a drained, engineered, fragile landscape where water has always had the final vote.

Romney Marsh looks simple only to people who have never had to live with it. On a map it can appear flat, open and convenient: a broad sweep of land close to the National Grid at Dungeness, with room for solar panels, cables, battery storage and all the other paraphernalia of the clean-energy age. On the ground, it’s more complicated. The Marsh is held together by water management: ditches, drains, sluices, outfalls, pumping stations, water-level controls and old field drainage systems, some of which may not be neatly recorded on any modern plan.

That is why South Brooks Solar Farm is not just another renewable-energy proposal. The scheme is being brought forward by EDF power solutions UK and PS Renewables, with the Planning Inspectorate’s scoping material naming Blue Planet Solar Limited as the applicant for the Environmental Impact Assessment process. The project would include solar generation and battery storage, connect into the National Grid at Dungeness Substation, and, according to the developers, could provide enough clean electricity to power more than 140,000 homes a year.

The BBC has now reported that EDF and PS Renewables have formally notified planning authorities that they intend to seek development consent for the project, with an application expected in early 2027. The same report says the developers have launched a further public engagement process, while local opposition remains sharp across Romney Marsh, where residents and campaigners are already dealing with a cluster of major solar and battery proposals rather than one isolated scheme.

The developers’ updated case is that the scheme has changed since the first consultation. The South Brooks website says feedback and environmental studies have led to a 20% reduction in the developable area, now stated as 655.3 hectares, and a 25% increase in land set aside for ecology and landscaping. It also says this includes a 43-hectare, or 106-acre, area next to RSPB Dungeness which would be dedicated to biodiversity.

That is not nothing. A reduced developable area is better than an unreduced one. More ecological land is better than less. But none of that settles the central issue. A better layout may still be a bad fit. More planting may soften views without removing the industrial character of a major solar and battery scheme. A biodiversity area may be valuable while still leaving serious questions about drainage, soils, construction traffic, battery firewater, farming, tourism, cumulative impact and consent.

The planning route matters too. South Brooks is being treated as a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project because of the amount of electricity it would generate. That means it would need a Development Consent Order rather than ordinary local planning permission. The Planning Inspectorate would examine the application and make a recommendation, but the final decision would be made by the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, not Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s planning committee.

That changes the democratic geography. Local people can comment. Councils can respond. Parish councils can object. Technical bodies can raise warnings. But the final decision moves into the national infrastructure system, where local consent can too easily become one input among many rather than the starting point. That is why the consultation period now under way matters so much.

The Phase Two consultation runs from 28 May to 9 July 2026. The South Brooks consultation page says residents can read the consultation booklet, Preliminary Environmental Information, exhibition boards and questionnaire, and can view printed material at Romney Marsh Community Hub in New Romney and Rye Library. Written feedback can be submitted through the online questionnaire, by email to info@southbrookssolarfarm.co.uk, or by post to South Brooks Solar Farm, FREEPOST SEC NEWGATE UK LOCAL.

There are five public exhibitions: Lydd Community Hall on Thursday 11 June, 1pm to 5pm; St Peter’s Church, Greatstone, on Friday 12 June, 4.30pm to 8.30pm; Maude Community Centre, New Romney, on Saturday 13 June, 11am to 3pm; Camber Memorial Hall on Friday 3 July, 4pm to 7pm; and Lydd Community Hall again on Saturday 4 July, 11am to 3pm. There are also Zoom webinars covering the consultation process, water resources, transport and access, landscape and visual impact, battery safety, soils and ecology.

That programme is useful, but residents should not treat it as a guided tour of a decision already made. The most important questions are not only where the access tracks go, how high the hedges grow, or whether the panels sit better here rather than there. The real questions are whether this level of infrastructure should be placed on Romney Marsh at all, whether the cumulative impact of several solar schemes is being assessed honestly, and whether the Marsh’s drainage system can safely absorb the construction and operation of another major energy project.

Hands Off Our Marsh has put the point bluntly. Its position is that people are being offered a say on how to soften the damage, not whether the damage should happen. That distinction matters. Consultation is not the same as consent if the only choices offered are different versions of the same outcome.

None of this means solar power is bad. Britain needs clean electricity, and it needs it quickly. Rooftop solar should be expanded much more aggressively on warehouses, supermarkets, public buildings, schools, car parks and new development. But Private Eye’s recent “Field War” column (Latest Issue 1676) made a useful point that should not be ignored: rooftops cannot solve every grid problem on their own, because power has to connect where the network can take it, and developers naturally look for land near available grid capacity.

Private Eye also does a good job of separating serious objections from weaker national claims. It notes that solar still covers only a very small share of UK land, that battery fire concerns should be evidence-led rather than panic-led, and that well-managed solar farms can support wildlife better than some intensively farmed land. The column also cites ecological studies suggesting solar farms can contain more bird species than surrounding arable farmland and support more butterflies than fields of wheat.

Those points matter because a strong Romney Marsh objection should not rely on lazy slogans. The argument isn’t “no solar anywhere”. Nor should it drift into the culture-war swamp where every clean-energy project becomes proof of some grand conspiracy against the countryside. The stronger argument is more precise: this place, this scale, this drainage system, this cluster of schemes, this 60-year lifespan, and this decision-making process all need much tougher scrutiny.

Private Eye’s most uncomfortable point is about farmers. The column notes that many arable farmers are not simply having panels imposed on them by wicked developers. Some have strong financial reasons to sign up, because guaranteed solar income can be attractive when farming returns are volatile and weather extremes are battering yields. It refers to rental income sometimes being five times what wheat brings in, on a small proportion of a farm.

That point lands harder when set beside the recent farming figures. The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit estimated that UK arable farmers faced a revenue reduction of more than £828m after the 2025 harvest, with production hit by the hottest spring and summer on record as well as drought conditions. In that context, a long-term solar agreement can look less like betrayal and more like financial survival.

That does not make every solar proposal right. It simply explains the pull. If farming has become a gamble against drought, flood, input costs, volatile prices and policy changes, a guaranteed rent cheque can look like the only stable crop in the field. The public interest question is whether private land deals should be allowed to reshape a nationally important landscape for 60 years without a far more searching debate about place, food, water, ecology, energy and consent.

Romney Marsh is not just an economic asset. It is a working landscape whose existence depends on drainage. Tony Vaughan KC MP’s March 2026 letter to SSE Renewables,  written about the separate Shepway Energy Park proposal at Newchurch, is highly relevant because it sets out the wider Marsh problem. He describes Romney Marsh as a low-lying wetland peninsula, reclaimed from the sea over centuries, whose distinctive character is inseparable from the drainage system that keeps it habitable.

The letter records that the Romney Marsh Area Internal Drainage Board maintains about 220 miles of watercourses, operates five pumping stations and oversees 140 water-level control structures across a drainage district of more than 33,000 hectares. It also explains the seasonal balancing act: in summer, the system retains water to support farming; in winter, it acts as the primary flood defence for land that is, in significant part, below sea level. That is why drainage cannot be treated as a technical appendix. It is the central issue. The letter warns that the network is dense and interconnected, and that damage or blockage in one part of the system can create wider consequences across the Marsh. It also highlights unmapped clay pipe field drainage systems of considerable age and fragility.

The Planning Inspectorate’s South Brooks Scoping Opinion confirms that this is not just local anxiety. It records that consultation bodies identified clay pipe drainage systems beneath parcels A to F that could be affected by piling and groundworks, and says the Environmental Statement should assess potential impacts on agricultural drainage systems where significant effects are likely. That is a crucial test for EDF power solutions UK, PS Renewables and the formal applicant. If the final Environmental Statement cannot show, in practical and site-specific detail, how construction, piling, cabling, access tracks and other works will avoid damage to field drainage, then residents will be entitled to ask whether the Marsh is being treated as a living water system or merely as a red-line boundary on a planning map.

Battery storage raises another practical question. This is not about shouting “fire” every time someone mentions a battery. It is about understanding what happens if a fire or thermal incident occurs in a low-lying drained landscape threaded with ditches. Vaughan’s letter asks how firefighting water and suppressant foam would be contained so that contaminated water does not reach the Romney Marsh drainage system.

The Planning Inspectorate scoping material makes the same issue unavoidable. It records advice that battery energy storage sites should have sealed drainage systems with penstock valves, that contaminated firewater storage should have enough capacity even during intense rainfall, and that firewater should be tested before release or removed from site for disposal. In other words, the battery question is not just “could there be a fire?” It is “where does the water go?”

Construction traffic is equally unglamorous and equally important. Vaughan’s letter says much of the Marsh’s highway network is flanked by watercourses, and that heavy construction traffic on saturated ground risks bank failure, highway damage and increased flood risk. It also points to reported problems at the Sycamore Solar Farm at Old Romney, where construction running into winter conditions was said to have led to polluted watercourses, silt run-off, damaged aquatic habitats and remedial works.

There is a seasonal trap here. If construction is restricted to drier months to reduce drainage risk, it collides with farming traffic, tourism and narrow local roads. If it pushes into wetter months, ground conditions and watercourse risks may worsen. That is not a public-relations difficulty. It is a practical delivery problem that needs a practical answer.

The cumulative impact question is where the debate becomes bigger than South Brooks. Hands Off Our Marsh has consistently warned that Romney Marsh is facing several large solar and battery proposals, not one isolated scheme. The Planning Inspectorate’s Section 51 advice log for South Brooks also notes the project’s proximity to two other solar NSIP projects expected to come forward in a similar timeframe, and says cumulative impact assessment is likely to be important.

Residents do not experience infrastructure one application at a time. They experience lorry movements, road disruption, fencing, substations, battery compounds, visual change, landscape fragmentation, drainage risk and construction noise as one combined reality. The planning system may prefer neat project boundaries. The Marsh does not.

That is why the developers’ improved design should be tested, not merely welcomed. A 20% reduction in developable area may be meaningful, but residents are entitled to ask what land remains, what has moved, what cumulative harm remains, how much Best and Most Versatile agricultural land is still affected, and how the promised ecological gains will be secured, monitored and enforced over the scheme’s proposed 60-year life.

The 60-year lifespan matters. “Temporary” is doing quite a lot of work when the period involved is longer than many residents will live in their homes and longer than many family farms will remain in the same hands. The developers say the land could be returned to agricultural production when the panels are removed. The question is what condition the land, drainage and soils will be in after six decades of altered use, construction, maintenance, decommissioning and climate change.

This is where the national and local arguments collide. Nationally, solar land take may be small – total area covered by solar power is less than 0.1%. Locally, a concentration of major schemes can still change the character of a place. Nationally, clean power is needed. Locally, the wrong project in the wrong place can produce a democratic backlash that makes future renewable development harder, not easier.

The sensible position is not to pretend there are no benefits. South Brooks could produce a large quantity of low-carbon electricity. It could help use existing grid infrastructure. It could deliver some biodiversity improvements if managed properly. It could provide farmers with reliable income in a brutal economic climate. Those are real points, and opponents weaken their case if they ignore them.

But the benefits do not answer everything. They do not automatically prove the Marsh is the right place. They do not remove the need for a full drainage assessment. They do not make cumulative impact vanish. They do not resolve the battery firewater issue. They do not guarantee that consultation is meaningful. And they do not prove that private income for some landowners equals public consent for a transformed landscape.

Residents now need to use the consultation hard. Ask where the clay pipes are. Ask what happens if piling damages field drains. Ask how battery firewater will be contained in heavy rainfall. Ask how construction traffic will be routed, timed and controlled. Ask who pays if banks, roads, watercourses or drainage structures are damaged. Ask how South Brooks will be assessed alongside Shepway Energy Park, South Kent Energy Park and other solar proposals affecting the Marsh.

They should also ask a more basic question: is this consultation inviting people to shape the scheme, or to consent to the principle? If the developers are only asking how the scheme should be softened, that should be said plainly. If the principle is still open, then residents should be given a genuine opportunity to challenge whether this scale of solar and battery infrastructure belongs on this landscape at all.

South Brooks is therefore not a simple morality play. The developers are not automatically villains. Farmers are not fools for looking at guaranteed income after a year in which arable farming took a severe hit from record heat and drought. Renewable energy is not optional. But Romney Marsh is not a blank canvas, and local people are not background scenery in someone else’s energy strategy.

The Marsh has survived because generations understood that water had to be managed with care, memory and respect. The planning system now has to show it understands that too. Before any Secretary of State is asked to sign off a 60-year energy scheme, residents deserve evidence that the drainage system, the roads, the soils, the wildlife, the farming economy and the cumulative landscape impact have been assessed with the seriousness Romney Marsh demands.

The core question is not whether Britain needs solar power. It does. The question is whether this particular scheme, in this particular place, at this particular scale, alongside other major proposals, can be justified without turning consultation into a paperwork ritual and Romney Marsh into an energy zone by instalments.

Seen something the public should know about? Send tips, documents or concerns to TheShepwayVoxTeam(at)proton(dot)me. You can contact us in confidence, speak off the record in the first instance, and help us follow the evidence where it leads.

The Shepway Vox Team

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