There’s a romantic version of farming being peddled in the solar debate on Romney Marsh, and as someone who farms here, I barely recognise it. In that version, every acre is bursting with wheat, every harvest pays its way and farmers simply need protecting from wicked developers waving cheque books. I wish farming were that straightforward. It isn’t.
My livelihood depends on what comes out of this land. That means weather I can’t control, yields I can’t guarantee and bills that arrive long before I know what the harvest will bring. Fertiliser, diesel, machinery, seed, labour and repairs don’t wait for a good year.
And lately the weather has been giving us a hiding.
July 2026 was England’s driest July on record. Southern England received just 1.9mm of rain, 3% of its long-term average, while Kent was among 19 counties recording 1mm or less. On 10 August, Kent and East Sussex were formally moved into drought. Those figures aren’t an interesting weather story to me. They’re the conditions I’m expected to make a living from.
The economics are just as sobering. Defra forecasts average Farm Business Income on English cereal farms falling by two-thirds in 2025/26, from £49,700 to £17,000, the lowest level since the present series began in 2004/05. General cropping farms are forecast to see average income halve from £107,700 to £54,000. Fertiliser and soil improver prices rose 11% in 2025, with ammonium nitrate averaging £385 a tonne, up from £338 the year before.
So when Hands Off Our Marsh and councillors talk about protecting the “farming economy”, I’d like them to ask the people who have to make it pay.
A farm isn’t preserved because somebody stops a solar development. A farm survives because the figures add up. If part of my holding can provide dependable income for decades while I keep ownership, retain agricultural activity where practical and eventually get the land back, I’d be daft not to consider it.
That isn’t abandoning farming. It’s diversification. Farmers have always diversified because relying on one unpredictable income is risky. Solar is another option.
The Government’s Solar Roadmap gives a useful example. A 509-acre farm near Sheringham in Norfolk put about 20 acres of moderate-quality agricultural land into solar. Forty ewes and their lambs still graze there from April to October, while the farm receives income from lamb and solar rent. The Government says those two streams help underpin the business against fluctuating crop prices.
That’s the bit some campaigners seem remarkably reluctant to discuss. Rent is predictable. Harvests aren’t.
Hands Off Our Marsh has every right to object. I share some concerns. I want drainage protected, proper soil surveys, construction traffic controlled and batteries scrutinised. I don’t want the best land sacrificed where poorer land would do, or developers making promises they aren’t held to.
But Hands Off Our Marsh doesn’t speak for every farmer or resident. Its website warns that projects could put up to 8,000 acres under solar and frames the issue around prime farmland and food security. Those arguments deserve testing. They don’t prove every solar scheme is wrong.
We’ve already seen why the detail matters. At St Mary’s Road, opposite Marten Farm, Folkestone & Hythe District Council approved a roughly 40-hectare solar farm in January. Council mapping had indicated Grades 1 and 2, but a field-specific Agricultural Land Classification survey found the whole site to be Grade 3b, moderate-quality land. The limiting factors included heavy silty clay loam and wetness. Claims about “prime Marsh farmland” need testing against soil evidence.
The scheme also allows sheep grazing around and beneath the panels. The officer report says the land will remain in pastoral agricultural use and, after the 40-year operational period, the equipment must be removed and the site restored to agricultural use apart from retained landscaping. KCC Ecology, Kent Fire and Rescue, the Environment Agency and the Internal Drainage Board raised no objection in principle, subject to conditions where applicable. The committee approved it eight votes to four.
Cllr David Wimble has publicly backed Hands Off Our Marsh and opposed St Mary’s Road, raising agricultural-land and grid concerns. He’s entitled to challenge it. But councillors must deal with the evidence: the detailed survey said Grade 3b, relevant consultees raised no objection in principle and officers recommended approval. Opposition doesn’t turn Grade 3b into Grade 1.
South Brooks is vastly bigger and raises much harder questions. The scheme covers about 1,208 hectares and is proposed for 60 years. Of the 812 hectares surveyed so far, 84% has been classed as Best and Most Versatile land: 1% Grade 1, 51% Grade 2 and 32% Grade 3a. Another 15% is Grade 3b and 1% Grade 4. The council is right to demand the final classification, justification for using higher-quality land and proper assessment of farming and cumulative effects.
Being pro-solar doesn’t require me to switch my brain off. If a developer wants hundreds of hectares of Grade 2 land, it must explain why. If panels can go onto poorer land, they should. If drainage, soil, farm businesses or habitats can’t be safeguarded, the scheme should change. That’s planning: an evidence test, not a referendum on panels.
At Folkestone & Hythe’s Planning and Licensing Committee on Tuesday 21 July 2026, members were considering the council’s consultation response to South Brooks. They weren’t deciding whether the solar farm would go ahead; the Chair made that explicit. It’s a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project and any eventual Development Consent Order will be determined nationally after examination.
At 54 minutes and eight seconds, Cllr Goddard said he wasn’t against solar and could accept Parcel D. Then the speech changed gear. Referring to new Prime Minister Andy Burnham, he said: “Take the panels with him, take them up north. The people of Marsh, the people of Marsh do not want this.”
Well, Councillor, I’m one of the people of the Marsh.
I farm here. I want the option of solar because I have to keep a farm alive through drought, volatile crop returns and unpredictable costs. Cllr Goddard doesn’t get to turn “the people of the Marsh” into one convenient voice because it plays well in the chamber. Nor does Hands Off Our Marsh.
He should stop playing the room and start talking to us farmers. He might learn something.
There’s an irony here. Andy Burnham became Prime Minister on 20 July, the day before that committee meeting. On 14 August his Government announced £65 million of extra drought support after the record-dry July. The Government said this was the third drought in five years and stressed that farmers shouldn’t be left carrying the risks of a changing climate alone. Cllr Goddard congratulated Burnham, then suggested sending the panels north. Perhaps he should also listen to what the new Prime Minister is saying about the pressures farmers face.
Then there’s the cry of “put it on roofs”.
Yes. Put solar on warehouses, schools, hospitals, supermarkets, houses and car parks. But roofs and fields aren’t an either-or choice. The Government’s Solar Roadmap says current-policy projections could see 60–65% of installed solar capacity by 2030 coming from large-scale projects. Solar currently uses around 0.1% of total UK land; the high end of the Government’s 2030 scenario would take that to about 0.4%. The same policy says poorer agricultural land should be preferred and Best and Most Versatile land must be justified.
The wildlife argument needs the same care. Solar can be badly designed and badly managed, but it isn’t automatically an ecological dead zone. Research involving the RSPB and University of Cambridge found nature-friendly solar farms in East Anglia supported nearly three times as many birds per hectare as surrounding arable land. At St Mary’s Road, the biodiversity metric predicts an 80.92% gain in habitat units, 387.87% in hedgerow units and 28.09% in watercourse units. Those gains now have to be delivered and monitored.
I don’t want Romney Marsh indiscriminately carpeted with panels or every scheme waved through. I want the right development on the right land, protected drainage and soil, enforceable restoration and developers made to prove their case.
But I also want councillors and campaigners to stop talking about farmers as though we’re scenery in somebody else’s countryside.
Romney Marsh is a working landscape. Working landscapes have to earn money. If putting solar on part of a farm provides stable income that allows the rest of that farm to keep producing food, employing people, maintaining ditches and staying viable, that matters too.
I don’t need Hands Off Our Marsh or a councillor deciding on my behalf that diversification is somehow a betrayal of farming.
I need the freedom to decide how I keep farming.
And when a councillor tells a room that “the people of Marsh” don’t want solar, he might remember that some of us are out here trying to make a living from the Marsh he’s talking about.
The views expressed in this guest post are those of the individual contributor and do not necessarily reflect those of the Shepway Vox Team.
Have a story that needs telling, or information you think may interest us? Please get in touch. All correspondence will be treated in the strictest confidence. TheShepwayVoxTeam@proton.me
There’s a lot in this piece we agree with. Farming is hard, drought is a real and growing risk, farm incomes have taken a genuine hit, and farmers are entitled to diversify however makes sense for their business, solar included. Hands Off Our Marsh has never said otherwise, and nothing above changes that.
Where we part ways is the idea that this is fundamentally a story about one farmer’s freedom to use his own land. It isn’t, and the Norfolk example in the piece actually shows why: twenty acres of a 509-acre farm, land retained, sheep still grazing underneath. Nobody objects to that.
South Brooks is a different scale of question. It’s roughly 1,208 hectares, proposed for 60 years, and of the land surveyed so far, 84% has been classified Best and Most Versatile (1% Grade 1, 51% Grade 2, 32% Grade 3a). That’s the developer’s own figure, and it’s not one they had reason to inflate, the same policy this piece cites means BMV land makes approval harder, not easier. A number that runs against the applicant’s own interest is worth taking at face value. It also isn’t proposed in isolation. South Kent Energy Park (859 hectares) and Shepway Energy Park (406 hectares) are proposed for the same stretch of Marsh, which puts around 2,473 hectares, over 6,100 acres, under some form of large-scale energy development boundary between the three schemes. Not every acre inside those boundaries will carry panels. But that’s the actual conversation this area needs, cumulative scale, not one field at a time.
On St Mary’s Road specifically: the piece is right that claims about land quality should be tested against evidence, and we’d go further than the piece does. That Grade 3b finding came from a survey commissioned by the applicant, Environmena, for their own application. Unlike South Brooks’ figure, that result is the one that suits the applicant’s own case (it clears the same BMV hurdle rather than complicating it). That’s exactly the kind of finding that needs checking against an independent source. Natural England’s provisional Agricultural Land Classification, cited in the Shepway Energy Park EIA Scoping Report (Part 4, pages 82 and 85, doc ref EN0110017-000005) for the same stretch of land, places that site within a Grade 2 area. Same test in both cases: a developer’s number carries more weight against their own interest, and needs independent checking when it happens to run in their favour.
One correction worth making plainly: HOOM doesn’t speak through any councillor, and no councillor speaks for us. What gets said in a committee room, by anyone, on either side, isn’t our position. Ours is what we’ve put in writing.
Nor do we claim to speak for every farmer, or for “the people of the Marsh” as a single voice. We’ve spoken to farmers who support these schemes, farmers who oppose them, and farmers still weighing up what they’d mean.
The question isn’t whether this farmer, or any farmer, should be free to diversify. It’s whether the scale of what’s being proposed across Romney Marsh, taken together, has been properly tested. And so far, that testing keeps turning up inconsistencies like the one above.
Oh, the irony. It is precisely the NIMBYism of anti-solar campaign groups that has blocked farmers from giving over a bit of their land for a smaller project; this has directly led to these applications for mega solar farms.
Applications under 100MW go through local councils, and the roadblocks anti-solar campaigners and councils have put in place effectively block these applications. This forces developers to go via the much more expensive NSIP route. When sites exceed 100MW, financial imperatives, including the cost of grid connections, then push developers to apply for even larger 500MW sites.
The farmer deserves full credit for speaking plainly and constructively. By contrast, Cllr Goddard’s remarks add little of substance. He was elected to represent Lydd and the Walland & Denge Marsh Ward, yet several councillors have indicated that he resides in Hastings — meaning the proposed solar programme will not directly affect him. This situation illustrates a familiar governance problem: when those entrusted with local representation become detached from the community they are meant to serve, their contributions risk becoming rhetorical rather than meaningful.
Hands Off Our Marsh is entitled to object to solar farms. It’s entitled to question land quality, scale, drainage, cumulative impact and whether developers’ evidence stacks up.
But there’s a fairly basic point here.
It’s my land.
I don’t go round to Kim’s house telling her what she can and can’t do with her property, subject to planning law. So what gives a campaign group the right to tell me what I should or shouldn’t do with mine?
If I want to put solar across part of my farm — or even apply to put it across the whole holding — I’m entitled to pursue that. Whether permission is granted is for the planning system to decide.
That’s very different from Hands Off Our Marsh deciding that its preferred use of my land should somehow carry more weight than mine.
Kim says the Norfolk example proves her point because it involved only 20 acres of a 509-acre farm and “nobody objects to that”.
Fine. So where’s the line?
Twenty acres is acceptable, apparently. What about 40? A hundred? Two hundred?
Who decides when a farmer has diversified too much?
South Brooks is undeniably huge and deserves far tougher scrutiny. Its 1,208-hectare scale, 60-year lifespan and high proportion of Best and Most Versatile land are serious issues. The cumulative effect alongside South Kent Energy Park and Shepway Energy Park also matters.
I’ve never argued otherwise.
But a Development Consent Order boundary isn’t the same thing as every acre inside it being covered in panels. Those boundaries also include landscaping, access, ecological areas, substations, cabling and buffers. Campaigners should be every bit as careful with those figures as they expect developers to be with theirs.
On St Mary’s Road, Kim argues that the Grade 3b classification deserves suspicion because the survey was commissioned by the applicant, while wider Natural England mapping indicates Grade 2 land.
The problem is that Natural England itself says its broad Agricultural Land Classification maps aren’t accurate enough to assess individual fields. Detailed site surveys are specifically used for that purpose.
FHDC’s planning officers recorded exactly that. The council’s broad mapping indicated Grades 1 and 2, but the detailed field survey found Grade 3b because of the actual soil conditions on site.
So if Hands Off Our Marsh has an independent, detailed soil survey of St Mary’s Road showing something different, publish it.
That would be evidence worth examining.
But saying a broad map should trump a field-specific soil survey simply because the detailed result happens to favour the applicant isn’t a particularly strong argument.
Nor am I persuaded by the suggestion that South Brooks’ figures deserve extra credibility because they work against the developer, whereas St Mary’s figures deserve more suspicion because they help it.
Evidence either stands up or it doesn’t.
We should judge the methodology, qualifications, samples and conclusions — not whether we like the result.
Kim also says Hands Off Our Marsh doesn’t speak for councillors and doesn’t claim to speak for every farmer. Fair enough.
But that’s precisely why I objected to Cllr Clive Goddard declaring that “the people of Marsh” don’t want this.
I’m one of those people.
I’m also a farmer here.
And I do want solar available as an option because I’m the one paying for fertiliser, diesel, machinery and everything else while gambling on weather and crop prices.
Cllr Goddard should stop playing the room and start talking to farmers who actually have to make these businesses pay.
He might learn something.
Some farmers will oppose solar. Some will support it. Others will sit somewhere in between.
That’s exactly as it should be.
What I won’t accept is the idea that preserving farming means freezing farms in their present form because somebody else prefers the landscape that way.
Farming isn’t scenery.
It’s a livelihood.
Hands Off Our Marsh can challenge developers, question surveys, oppose individual schemes and demand better evidence.
But when it comes to what I should be allowed even to consider doing with my own farm, there’s one distinction worth remembering:
you’re campaigning about the land. I’m trying to make a living from it.
Its well known that HOOM is a Reform and David Wimble’s Supporters Club. They have criticised people of the Marsh for the low number of attendees at the public engagement events. And Wimble had stop the solar as part of his election campaign. They speak for each other. If a Farmer wants to diversify, then subject to planning HOOM and Wimble can’t stop them.
I’d argue it’s the other way round and it doesn’t stop at Reform. Many councillors… Reform, Conservative, Labour and Green are supportive of HOOM. HOOM engages with all party councillors and independents, and many of those councillors share the same views as HOOM, even some Greens… that mass scale solar and battery infrastructure should not be placed on BMV land, especially in a cat 3 flood risk zone. As the Green leader of FHDC says ‘Rooftops not rural.’
The farmer here has not given a name and is hiding behind anonymity. It creates doubt about the authenticity of the article and pushes it into the area of large solar PR spin. It sits in contrast to the farmers who have come forward under their own names and are fighting these proposals with all their heart. And as for the farmers who have signed up to these schemes. I can only quote what one farmer said to us, “I don’t need the money” (A direct quote.) Of course he did state, “It makes good business sense”. But then that is at the expense of the community.
The farmer’s anonymity shouldn’t be mistaken for a lack of authenticity. He’s chosen not to be named because he has previously received both verbal and physical abuse from some people across the Marsh, and understandably doesn’t wish to expose himself or his family to further hostility simply for expressing a different view.
Farmers who publicly oppose these schemes are entitled to do so, just as farmers who support solar are entitled to their view. One farmer saying “I don’t need the money” doesn’t speak for every farming business on Romney Marsh. For others, a reliable long-term income could make a very real difference.
Nor does saying that solar “makes good business sense” automatically mean it’s at the expense of the community. That’s precisely what the planning process is there to determine — balancing private landowners’ rights, farming viability and the wider public interest.
Anonymity doesn’t invalidate an argument. The evidence and the substance of what’s being said should be what matters.
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There’s a lot in this piece we agree with. Farming is hard, drought is a real and growing risk, farm incomes have taken a genuine hit, and farmers are entitled to diversify however makes sense for their business, solar included. Hands Off Our Marsh has never said otherwise, and nothing above changes that.
Where we part ways is the idea that this is fundamentally a story about one farmer’s freedom to use his own land. It isn’t, and the Norfolk example in the piece actually shows why: twenty acres of a 509-acre farm, land retained, sheep still grazing underneath. Nobody objects to that.
South Brooks is a different scale of question. It’s roughly 1,208 hectares, proposed for 60 years, and of the land surveyed so far, 84% has been classified Best and Most Versatile (1% Grade 1, 51% Grade 2, 32% Grade 3a). That’s the developer’s own figure, and it’s not one they had reason to inflate, the same policy this piece cites means BMV land makes approval harder, not easier. A number that runs against the applicant’s own interest is worth taking at face value. It also isn’t proposed in isolation. South Kent Energy Park (859 hectares) and Shepway Energy Park (406 hectares) are proposed for the same stretch of Marsh, which puts around 2,473 hectares, over 6,100 acres, under some form of large-scale energy development boundary between the three schemes. Not every acre inside those boundaries will carry panels. But that’s the actual conversation this area needs, cumulative scale, not one field at a time.
On St Mary’s Road specifically: the piece is right that claims about land quality should be tested against evidence, and we’d go further than the piece does. That Grade 3b finding came from a survey commissioned by the applicant, Environmena, for their own application. Unlike South Brooks’ figure, that result is the one that suits the applicant’s own case (it clears the same BMV hurdle rather than complicating it). That’s exactly the kind of finding that needs checking against an independent source. Natural England’s provisional Agricultural Land Classification, cited in the Shepway Energy Park EIA Scoping Report (Part 4, pages 82 and 85, doc ref EN0110017-000005) for the same stretch of land, places that site within a Grade 2 area. Same test in both cases: a developer’s number carries more weight against their own interest, and needs independent checking when it happens to run in their favour.
One correction worth making plainly: HOOM doesn’t speak through any councillor, and no councillor speaks for us. What gets said in a committee room, by anyone, on either side, isn’t our position. Ours is what we’ve put in writing.
Nor do we claim to speak for every farmer, or for “the people of the Marsh” as a single voice. We’ve spoken to farmers who support these schemes, farmers who oppose them, and farmers still weighing up what they’d mean.
The question isn’t whether this farmer, or any farmer, should be free to diversify. It’s whether the scale of what’s being proposed across Romney Marsh, taken together, has been properly tested. And so far, that testing keeps turning up inconsistencies like the one above.
Kim, Co-Director, Hands Off Our Marsh
Oh, the irony. It is precisely the NIMBYism of anti-solar campaign groups that has blocked farmers from giving over a bit of their land for a smaller project; this has directly led to these applications for mega solar farms.
Applications under 100MW go through local councils, and the roadblocks anti-solar campaigners and councils have put in place effectively block these applications. This forces developers to go via the much more expensive NSIP route. When sites exceed 100MW, financial imperatives, including the cost of grid connections, then push developers to apply for even larger 500MW sites.
The farmer deserves full credit for speaking plainly and constructively. By contrast, Cllr Goddard’s remarks add little of substance. He was elected to represent Lydd and the Walland & Denge Marsh Ward, yet several councillors have indicated that he resides in Hastings — meaning the proposed solar programme will not directly affect him. This situation illustrates a familiar governance problem: when those entrusted with local representation become detached from the community they are meant to serve, their contributions risk becoming rhetorical rather than meaningful.
Hands Off Our Marsh is entitled to object to solar farms. It’s entitled to question land quality, scale, drainage, cumulative impact and whether developers’ evidence stacks up.
But there’s a fairly basic point here.
It’s my land.
I don’t go round to Kim’s house telling her what she can and can’t do with her property, subject to planning law. So what gives a campaign group the right to tell me what I should or shouldn’t do with mine?
If I want to put solar across part of my farm — or even apply to put it across the whole holding — I’m entitled to pursue that. Whether permission is granted is for the planning system to decide.
That’s very different from Hands Off Our Marsh deciding that its preferred use of my land should somehow carry more weight than mine.
Kim says the Norfolk example proves her point because it involved only 20 acres of a 509-acre farm and “nobody objects to that”.
Fine. So where’s the line?
Twenty acres is acceptable, apparently. What about 40? A hundred? Two hundred?
Who decides when a farmer has diversified too much?
South Brooks is undeniably huge and deserves far tougher scrutiny. Its 1,208-hectare scale, 60-year lifespan and high proportion of Best and Most Versatile land are serious issues. The cumulative effect alongside South Kent Energy Park and Shepway Energy Park also matters.
I’ve never argued otherwise.
But a Development Consent Order boundary isn’t the same thing as every acre inside it being covered in panels. Those boundaries also include landscaping, access, ecological areas, substations, cabling and buffers. Campaigners should be every bit as careful with those figures as they expect developers to be with theirs.
On St Mary’s Road, Kim argues that the Grade 3b classification deserves suspicion because the survey was commissioned by the applicant, while wider Natural England mapping indicates Grade 2 land.
The problem is that Natural England itself says its broad Agricultural Land Classification maps aren’t accurate enough to assess individual fields. Detailed site surveys are specifically used for that purpose.
FHDC’s planning officers recorded exactly that. The council’s broad mapping indicated Grades 1 and 2, but the detailed field survey found Grade 3b because of the actual soil conditions on site.
So if Hands Off Our Marsh has an independent, detailed soil survey of St Mary’s Road showing something different, publish it.
That would be evidence worth examining.
But saying a broad map should trump a field-specific soil survey simply because the detailed result happens to favour the applicant isn’t a particularly strong argument.
Nor am I persuaded by the suggestion that South Brooks’ figures deserve extra credibility because they work against the developer, whereas St Mary’s figures deserve more suspicion because they help it.
Evidence either stands up or it doesn’t.
We should judge the methodology, qualifications, samples and conclusions — not whether we like the result.
Kim also says Hands Off Our Marsh doesn’t speak for councillors and doesn’t claim to speak for every farmer. Fair enough.
But that’s precisely why I objected to Cllr Clive Goddard declaring that “the people of Marsh” don’t want this.
I’m one of those people.
I’m also a farmer here.
And I do want solar available as an option because I’m the one paying for fertiliser, diesel, machinery and everything else while gambling on weather and crop prices.
Cllr Goddard should stop playing the room and start talking to farmers who actually have to make these businesses pay.
He might learn something.
Some farmers will oppose solar. Some will support it. Others will sit somewhere in between.
That’s exactly as it should be.
What I won’t accept is the idea that preserving farming means freezing farms in their present form because somebody else prefers the landscape that way.
Farming isn’t scenery.
It’s a livelihood.
Hands Off Our Marsh can challenge developers, question surveys, oppose individual schemes and demand better evidence.
But when it comes to what I should be allowed even to consider doing with my own farm, there’s one distinction worth remembering:
you’re campaigning about the land. I’m trying to make a living from it.
Its well known that HOOM is a Reform and David Wimble’s Supporters Club. They have criticised people of the Marsh for the low number of attendees at the public engagement events. And Wimble had stop the solar as part of his election campaign. They speak for each other. If a Farmer wants to diversify, then subject to planning HOOM and Wimble can’t stop them.
I’d argue it’s the other way round and it doesn’t stop at Reform. Many councillors… Reform, Conservative, Labour and Green are supportive of HOOM. HOOM engages with all party councillors and independents, and many of those councillors share the same views as HOOM, even some Greens… that mass scale solar and battery infrastructure should not be placed on BMV land, especially in a cat 3 flood risk zone. As the Green leader of FHDC says ‘Rooftops not rural.’
The farmer here has not given a name and is hiding behind anonymity. It creates doubt about the authenticity of the article and pushes it into the area of large solar PR spin. It sits in contrast to the farmers who have come forward under their own names and are fighting these proposals with all their heart. And as for the farmers who have signed up to these schemes. I can only quote what one farmer said to us, “I don’t need the money” (A direct quote.) Of course he did state, “It makes good business sense”. But then that is at the expense of the community.
The farmer’s anonymity shouldn’t be mistaken for a lack of authenticity. He’s chosen not to be named because he has previously received both verbal and physical abuse from some people across the Marsh, and understandably doesn’t wish to expose himself or his family to further hostility simply for expressing a different view.
Farmers who publicly oppose these schemes are entitled to do so, just as farmers who support solar are entitled to their view. One farmer saying “I don’t need the money” doesn’t speak for every farming business on Romney Marsh. For others, a reliable long-term income could make a very real difference.
Nor does saying that solar “makes good business sense” automatically mean it’s at the expense of the community. That’s precisely what the planning process is there to determine — balancing private landowners’ rights, farming viability and the wider public interest.
Anonymity doesn’t invalidate an argument. The evidence and the substance of what’s being said should be what matters.