Planning Fees for Solar Farms - Public forum - Planning Advisory Service (PAS)
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En cours - juillet 2012
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Dernière modification - May
Planning Fees for Solar Farms
A colleague is dealing with pre-apps for a solar farm of 15ha in area. The development would include several smallish buildings to house invertors/substation. There appears to be a plethora of guidance in respect of wind turbines but less so with solar farm developments, particularly in respect of fees. A nearby authority has validated an application with a fee of £1,690 thus treating it as 'engineering or other operations' where that is the maximum. Other authorities seem to be treating the development as 'plant or machinery' which has a maximum fee of 250k. Has anyone got any experience with this? Has you authority validated an application recently and if so, what fee did you charge?
we went with plant and machinery but only on the area of land covered not the red line of the application site. Seemed to be more in keeping with the guidence on wind farms.
We have received an application plus a fee of £1,690- we do agree and have invalidated the application on teh basis that it falls within plant or machinery category of development- a view confirmed by our Legal Department . The Communities and Local Government Circular 04/2008 states that wind turbines are Category 5 development (Plant and Machinery). It is likely that solar panels will be treated the same. Other examples of plant and machinery are given; external conveyor belts, non-domestic radio masts and other electronic communications equipment. The agent makes use of the fact that solar panels are non-moving in order to classify them as category 9 development, however this is clearly not a requirement, as radio masts (for example) are also non-moving but clearly considered category 5.
In addition to my colleagues comments, I would add that the GDO defines plant and machinery as "Any structure or erection in the nature of plant/machinery" . There is very little case law on the subject but sufficient information to charge £335 for each 0.1hectare of site area. In this respect, the site area (as outlined in red on the location plan) should include all land neccessary to carry out the development, parking, hardstanding and access to the nearest public highway) thus I would calculate the fee on the overall site area not just on the land covered by the solar panels.