The Long Read: KCC Banks Solar Farm Cash as Reform Says No to Romney Marsh Panels

Reform-led Kent County Council says it wants to protect Kent farmland from excessive solar development. Fair enough. But the council also owns solar farms, including a 94-acre site in Somerset, and the returns are now flowing through a County Hall run by Reform.

Stand on Romney Marsh and the solar argument doesn’t begin with energy policy. It begins with fields, drainage ditches, wheat, sheep, big skies, scattered villages and a flat open landscape where there’s nowhere for an industrial-scale energy scheme to hide. Hands Off Our Marsh says current and proposed solar and battery schemes could cover around 5,300 acres, or roughly 8.5 square miles, equal to about 10% of Romney Marsh.

That’s why the campaign has taken hold. Its argument isn’t “no solar ever”. It’s “fields for food, rooftops for solar”: put panels on rooftops, brownfield and genuine low-grade land before covering some of the country’s most productive and sensitive marsh farmland. The group’s stated concerns include food security, flood safety, landscape, heritage, tourism, wildlife, battery storage, traffic and cumulative impact.

Reform Folkestone, Hythe & Romney Marsh has chosen the same battlefield. Its local policy page says “Put a STOP to Solar farms on Romney Marsh”, describes excessive solar and wind farm development as the “large-scale destruction of the Marsh Farm land”, and says solar panels should primarily be installed on residential, commercial and farm buildings so owners benefit directly.

KCC Cabinet Member Cllr David Wimble’s own Reform profile says the trend for vast solar farms covering the Marsh’s green spaces “is not the answer”, and says he’ll work to halt large-scale solar farms which threaten the rural nature of the area while promoting nuclear energy instead. He is also listed by KCC as Reform UK, county councillor for Romney Marsh and Cabinet Member for Economic Development and Special Projects.

That is where the sunshine gets awkward.

Because Kent County Council already owns solar farms.

One is Kings Hill Solar Park in Kent: an 11.9-acre, 2.98MW site with 6,480 panels, expected to generate 2.8 million kWh a year and provide estimated revenue of more than £13m over the lifetime of the farm.

The other is Bowerhouse II Solar Farm in North Somerset: a 38-hectare, 94-acre solar farm acquired by Kent County Council and LASER Energy in 2022, with capacity for 39,312 panels and expected generation of 22,000 megawatt hours a year.

Bowerhouse II was not bought by Reform. It was acquired in April 2022, when KCC was still Conservative-run; the official 2021 KCC election results show the Conservatives held 61 seats, while the 2025 results show Reform later won 57 seats. So this isn’t a story about Reform buying solar farms. It’s a story about Reform now governing the council that benefits from them.

And the benefits are not imaginary.

LASER said the Bowerhouse II acquisition used £14.415m from the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme, would reduce carbon emissions while saving energy costs for KCC, and would contribute about 30% of KCC’s then net-zero carbon-reduction target through Renewable Energy Guarantees of Origin certificates.

KCC’s own January 2026 Governance and Audit Committee report says Bowerhouse II Solar Farm had sales of £3.229m, costs of £1.928m and profit of £1.301m in 2024/25; the previous year’s figures were sales of £3.208m, costs of £1.831m and profit of £1.377m.

The same KCC report says the return from Bowerhouse II Solar Ltd is mainly a rebate on energy purchased, but also provides a dividend. For 2024/25, that rebate was £760,000, the same as the prior year.

So the public record is clear. Kent County Council owns a large solar farm outside Kent. It was acquired with decarbonisation money. It was linked to KCC’s former net-zero target. It produces electricity, company profit and a rebate. Reform-led KCC now inherits those benefits.

There’s nothing automatically wrong with that. Councils can own assets, reduce bills, generate income and make business-case decisions. But it does make the politics of solar in Kent much harder to sell with a straight face.

KCC’s official line is more careful than the slogans

KCC’s current solar position does not say“solar bad”. It says KCC is “in principle supportive of solar generation”, but believes solar developments should be well-designed, appropriately located and consistent with protecting valued landscapes, habitats, heritage and agricultural land. It also says solar schemes require careful consideration and should not be located on Best and Most Versatile agricultural land, grades 1 to 3a.

That is a serious planning position. Scale matters. Soil quality matters. Landscape matters. Flood risk matters. Battery safety matters. Cumulative impact matters. A small solar farm on lower-grade or previously compromised land is not the same as a nationally significant energy park spread around Marsh villages.

But the same KCC report says the new position supports Reforming Kent priorities to “stand firm against excessively large housing and solar farm developments”, protect land from “excessively large solar farms”, and push back on inappropriate solar farm development planned for Kent. It also says the old 2014 statement remains online but does not represent the current administration’s position.

The issue, then, is not whether KCC can oppose bad solar schemes. Of course it can. The issue is whether solar income becomes respectable when County Hall receives it, but suspect when farmers and landowners on Romney Marsh seek long-term income from their own land.

A useful national commentary comes from Private Eye. It sets out the familiar objections — productive farmland, long consent periods, rooftops-first arguments, battery-fire fears and claims that solar farms are ecological wastelands — but also notes the counter-case: solar covers a small share of national land, rooftops can’t do everything, battery safety is improving, well-managed solar sites can support wildlife, and farmers hit by extreme weather may see solar as guaranteed income.

That doesn’t settle the Romney Marsh argument. It does, however, puncture the lazy idea that farmers seeking solar income are automatically wicked developers in wellies. If KCC can treat solar as a prudent income-generating asset, it needs to be careful about treating similar financial logic on private farms as some kind of rural betrayal.

Somerset objectors sounded familiar

Before KCC acquired Bowerhouse II, which covers 38 hectares, or 94 acres, and produces about 21MW, using 39,312 panels. Local residents in Somerset had already objected to the planning application. Banwell Parish Council’s papers record that “several residents spoke in objection” to application 20/P/0620/FUL, raising archaeology, ecology, birds of prey, geese migration, wildlife disruption, tourism impact, narrow lanes, cumulative solar-panel impact, loss of green space, site maintenance and alleged conflict with North Somerset solar-farm policy.

Banwell Parish Council said it supported solar farms in principle, but unanimously recommended refusal because of archaeological importance, ecological impact, wildlife disruption, scale, cumulative impact, loss of green space and loss of visual amenity.

KCC was not responsible for North Somerset’s planning decision, and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise. But KCC later acquired the benefit of a scheme which had attracted objections that sound strikingly familiar to anyone following the Romney Marsh solar rows.

There is also an important distinction. LASER’s later Bowerhouse article says the Somerset site was lower-grade agricultural land, approximately grades 3B and 3C, historically used for low-yield crop production and grazing. Hands Off Our Marsh says much of Romney Marsh’s farmland is top-grade 1 and 2 land capable of producing high yields of wheat, potatoes, maize, oilseed rape and other crops.

That distinction matters. It is one reason KCC can argue that Bowerhouse II, Kings Hill and the Marsh proposals are not the same thing. But it does not remove the political awkwardness. It simply moves the question from “is solar good or bad?” to “which land, whose income, whose countryside and who gets to decide?”

Kings Hill faced local objection too

KCC’s smaller Kent solar farm at Kings Hill which covers 11.9-acre, and produces 2.98MW, with 6,480-panels, also faced local concern. West Malling Parish Council considered application TM/21/02632/CR3, KCC reference KCC/TM/0209/2021, for a ground-mounted solar array north of King Hill Farm, Malling Road, Kings Hill.

The parish council said members had discussed the application “at great length”. They were concerned the site was within the Metropolitan Green Belt, worried about views from the A228, asked for enhanced boundary treatment if permission were granted, and requested a land-management scheme to promote biodiversity. Its conclusion was blunt: “On balance, members object to this application.”

The application was later recorded as granted, with West Malling Parish Council noting that its planning committee had objected. KCC then presented Kings Hill as an 11.9-acre, 2.98MW solar park funded under the Public Sector Decarbonisation Fund, costing £5m overall, with KCC contributing £1.545m capital investment.

Again, Kings Hill is not Romney Marsh. It is much smaller, and it is not an NSIP-scale proposal. But it shows KCC already knows that solar farms can draw local objections on landscape, Green Belt, visual-impact and biodiversity grounds, even where the council later presents the result as a successful public-sector energy project.

Net zero out, net-zero assets in

The climate politics make the story even stranger. In September 2025, Reform-led KCC considered a motion to rescind the council’s 2019 climate emergency declaration. The motion paper was proposed by Cllr Chris Hespe and seconded by Cllr Paul Chamberlain, and said KCC had endorsed the “unproven view” of anthropogenic climate change.

The motion asked KCC to be “open-minded but sceptical” of anthropogenic climate change, consider energy schemes through a business-case lens, and rescind the previous climate emergency declaration.

KCC has since moved to replace its Net Zero 2030 Plan with an Energy Efficiency Plan. Its own decision page says the Net Zero 2030 target is unattainable and does not represent best value for Kent residents.

Yet that same KCC decision page says the council’s emissions-reduction work over the previous five years generated close to £9m in fuel and utility savings, attracted more than £24m of external funding to improve the estate, and generated more than £2m revenue from the council’s two solar farms.

That is the nub. The net-zero plan that Reform-led KCC now says is unattainable also helped produce the funding, savings and solar-farm revenue that Reform-led KCC now inherits. Net zero may be out as a political slogan. Net-zero assets remain very much in the accounts.

The Straits problem

Then there is the cross-Channel paperwork. KCC is part of the Straits Committee, a partnership of authorities around the Dover Strait and Channel-North Sea area. Its public vision says the Straits should be the place where the UK and continental Europe “meet and thrive”, and should deliver CO2 emission-reduction commitments while putting the area on the path to net zero across all sectors.

The Straits Committee vision document says the same thing. It lists Kent County Council among the member authorities and says the 2030 vision includes CO2 reduction, net zero across all sectors, climate leadership, climate adaptation, biodiversity, water management, drought, flooding, coastline management and sustainable agriculture and fisheries.

So KCC’s public record now speaks in several voices at once. Reform locally says stop solar farms on Romney Marsh. Cllr Wimble’s profile says he’ll halt large-scale solar farms threatening the area’s rural character. KCC’s formal position says solar is supported in principle if it is appropriately designed and located. KCC’s Energy Efficiency Plan says the old emissions work generated savings, external funding and solar-farm revenue. And KCC remains linked to a cross-border vision using CO2 reduction and net-zero language.

That is not one tidy policy.

That is a policy wardrobe with several outfits inside it.

None of this proves wrongdoing. It does not prove KCC acted improperly in acquiring Bowerhouse II. It does not prove Kings Hill was wrongly approved. It does not prove every Romney Marsh solar proposal should be approved, or rejected. Planning is more complicated than slogans.

But public consistency matters. If KCC accepts solar farms as legitimate income-generating public assets, it should explain why solar income for farmers and landowners in Kent is treated so differently in the political argument.

KCC should also explain what distinguishes “appropriate” solar from “excessively large” solar beyond whether the site happens to be in Kent. Its own position statement discourages use of high-grade agricultural land and encourages rooftops, car parks and brownfield land over ground-mounted greenfield and agricultural schemes, but it also keeps flexibility to consider individual cases.

A genuinely useful public exercise would compare Kings Hill, Bowerhouse II and the major Romney Marsh proposals on land grade, flood risk, biodiversity, landscape impact, grid connection, battery safety, community benefit, public subsidy, commercial return and who receives the money.

KCC should also say whether it still claims carbon-accounting benefits from Bowerhouse II and Kings Hill now that it has replaced its Net Zero 2030 Plan. LASER said Bowerhouse II contributed about 30% of KCC’s net-zero carbon-reduction target; KCC now says the 2030 target is unattainable, while also recording more than £2m revenue from its two solar farms.

Romney Marsh residents are entitled to defend the landscape they love. Hands Off Our Marsh is entitled to campaign against schemes it believes would damage farmland, wildlife, heritage, tourism and the Marsh’s sense of place. Farmers are also entitled to look at a changing rural economy and ask how they keep landholdings viable. Long-term solar leases are not automatically a moral failing; they are often a business decision, and sometimes a survival decision.

KCC is entitled to support solar in some places and oppose it in others. But it is not entitled to fog. If County Hall wants to say “rooftops, car parks and brownfield first”, that is clear. If it wants to say “not on Grade 1, 2 or 3a agricultural land”, that is clear. If it wants to say “no grid-scale batteries near villages without robust safety evidence”, that is clear. If it wants to say “we’ll keep our existing solar assets because they save money”, that is also clear.

What it can’t do, at least not without raising eyebrows from Maidstone to the Marsh, is bank income from solar farms while treating other people’s solar income as a rural sin.

The public record tells its own story. Bowerhouse II was acquired with decarbonisation funding. Kings Hill was developed under KCC’s former net-zero approach. Both were inherited by Reform-led KCC. Both sit inside the council’s current financial and energy story. One of them is a 94-acre solar farm in somebody else’s countryside.

So the question is not whether the sun should power Kent.

The question is whether the sun only becomes acceptable when Kent County Council owns the panels.

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