Oakland Solar Park DCO decision

The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (SoS) has recently granted development consent for the Oaklands Farm Solar Park on 19 June 2025. The decision to grant consent for a solar farm with a generating capacity of 138 MW which is situated over 191 hectares, a majority of which being highly valued agricultural land is emblematic of this government's desire to see through their goal of consenting 150 Development Consent Orders (DCO) during their term.

We break down the key aspects of the decision and the application.

The Project

Oaklands Farm Solar Park Project (The Project) is a co-located solar farm and battery energy storage system (BESS) project which is situated within the administrative boundaries of South Derbyshire District Council and Derbyshire County Council. The Project is expected to have an export capacity of up to 138 MW whilst the BESS elements of the project would have a storage capacity of 37.5 MW.

The application for the Project was submitted by a subsidiary of renewable energy company BayWa-re (Applicant).

Key Issues

The key issues largely centred around the substantial amount of high value agricultural land that the Project was situated on. The first issue was the provision of sufficient controls to ensure timely decommissioning and reinstatement of land. The second was the impact that the Project would have on agricultural land use given that the majority of the 191-ha site was situated on Best and Most Versatile Land (BMV Land ). The Overarching National Policy Statement for Energy states that applicants should ensure that they do not site their scheme on BMV land without justification and preferably use land of poorer quality.

Impacts on agricultural land and soils generated most of the attention from locally based objectors and the Local Planning Authority (LPA). The applicant's Agricultural Land Classification studies confirmed that of the 191-ha comprising the site and cable route, 36ha are grade 2 (very good), 87ha are grade 3a (good) and 62ha are grade 3b (moderate). The SoS noted that the use of BMV land only represented 0.003% of the total BMV land in England. Whilst for this site the Project would use a high proportion of BMV land, the SoS was satisfied that there were sufficient controls in place to ensure that use was temporary. Overall, considering the contribution that the Project would have to net-zero as well as the aforementioned temporary use of BMV land the SoS was satisfied that the impact on BMV land was acceptable.

Regarding decommissioning, the LPA, Highway Authority and the Environment Agency considered that decommissioning should be completed within a specified timescale. Whilst recently made solar DCO's such as the East Yorkshire Solar Farm Order 2025 and Mallard Pass Solar Farm Order 2024 prescribe the date upon which a developer must commence decommissioning, the Project's DCO has prescribed a two-year deadline by which decommissioning and restoration works must be completed. It stands to be seen whether such an obligation will become the norm moving forward for solar DCO's . It is worth noting that solar developments consented through the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 such as Drayton Manor Farm and the Astley Gorse Solar Farm Extension include conditions requiring decommissioning and restoration to be completed within a set timeframe from cessation of commercial generation. However, the push for such a control by the LPA at the NSIP level is reflective of their concern to ensure that any temporary loss of agricultural land remains just that, temporary.

Katherine Evans commented that in addition to the move towards time based decommissioning conditions as seen regularly in planning permissions, the change of threshold for NSIPs from 50MW to 100MW might see solar energy proposals of the sort of size of this proposal being downsized (which might have avoided some of the BMV land in this case) so as to dip under the threshold.

Authors: Katherine Evans and Benjamin Barry-Walsh

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