This website has been set up to share our concerns about the proposed solar farm in the village of Weeton, North Yorkshire, with its significant visual impact, transport issues, impacts on local heritage and impact on green belt land.

The Juniper Farm proposal is not about reaching net zero, it is about maximising profit. Developers, like the Spanish company ABEI energy who are applying for the solar farm in Weeton, want to use farmland as its cheaper, quicker and easier - with more profit for them and the landowner and no benefit for you.

Stop Weeton Solar Farm is NOT an anti-solar campaign, we believe that solar should be located on commercial and domestic roof tops, brownfield sites and alongside infrastructure corridors like railways and motorways, while preserving our environment, our food security, our heritage, our livelihoods and our well-being. In this way solar can then help deliver Net Zero while significantly minimising any harms and with the support of communities.

We can learn from our neighbouring countries such as Germany who, in 2023 alone, installed 14GW of new solar capacity - quickly and efficiently - and predominantly using rooftop space (almost 70%). In France, all car parks with >80 spaces must have solar installed.

The unnecessary loss of productive farmland to solar development is not being monitored in the UK, let alone managed. Government departments and planning decision makers are unable to assess the cumulative impacts of such loss across the nation, and the consequential impact this is having on UK food security, future farming industry and livelihoods.

The value of our countryside and heritage cannot be underestimated when it comes to positive health and well-being and sense of identity and place. Once it has gone, it has gone. We don’t need to industrialise vast swathes of rural landscapes to achieve our Net Zero targets. We need to ensure that solar is delivered in the right way, with community support, and stop the current ‘Wild West’ situation of poor quality and highly damaging ground-mounted solar proposals on inappropriate sites, like that proposed for Weeton.

A useful resource for further information: https://www.uksolaralliance.org/