The Information Commissioner recently posed the question, “Are charities taking advantage of people’s generosity, or indeed just taking advantage of people full stop?”
People put their faith in these organisations, and trust that they will present a true and accurate picture of matters of interest to their membership, that they research properly the statements they make about the goods they sell, or the services they provide and the fundraising in which they engage.
The Dorset Wildlife Trust campaign against the approved plans for Rampisham Down is based upon repeating several headline inaccuracies and their public campaign continues to present a misleading and sometimes false picture of the situation.
Dorset Wildlife Trust (DWT) maintain that:
1. The proposed activity on the site will DESTROY Rampisham Down. (1) The site has been closely monitored since activity ceased there and shows the complete opposite. See HERE
2. The BBC’s activity on the site was BENIGN. (2) In fact this brownfield site was largely DESTROYED by the BBC in 1983 – see HERE. When the site was purchased 20 years later, it had recovered so well that it was an SNCI under the care of DWT with a management plan in place, though it was in a very poor condition as DWT had not implemented the plan and were not monitoring the site. The improvement to this site since BSR took over its care is clear to see HERE.
3. There is AN ALTERNATIVE SITE and that DWT were involved in the negotiations over this site. (3) This is simply untrue. This argument is used by DWT in order to give their campaign legitimacy in relation to the planning rules, which state that such developments can’t normally go ahead if an alternative site is available.
4. The remaining masts are subject to DECAY AND COLLAPSE and the cost of removal will be met through development of the ALTERNATIVE SITE. (4) There is no basis in fact for this statement.
5. There are ADDERS on the site. (5) The last time an adder was recorded was in 2006, across the road. There have been no adders recorded on this site.
6. The solar park is 76 HECTARES IN SIZE (6). The panelled area is in fact 23% of the total area of the site and includes wider than normal gaps between the arrays and the panels. See HERE. An area was piled in 2014 and now, just one year later, the piled areas have completely recovered, proving that the site is undamaged and indeed flourishing, in spite of the activity. See HERE.
7. This is an extremely rare habitat, which will be IRREVOCABLY DAMAGED by the proposed activity. (7) DWT consistently fail to point out this is a ‘man-made’ habitat and requires human intervention in order to preserve it. The loss of this habitat nationally has been through development, afforestation or agriculture. Rampisham Down is a brownfield site, full of concrete, and is unsuitable for agriculture or afforestation, and therefore human intervention, management and equipment will be required to preserve this transitional habitat. These costs will be covered within the management plan for the solar park. See HERE.
8. Sheep would NOT BE ABLE TO GRAZE FREELY freely under the panels. DWT encourage members of the public to sign a letter to their MP, which contains this and various other hypothetical and misinformed statements about grazing patterns. These statements are not borne out by any of the evidence collected so far from the many, many solar parks that are now successfully used for grazing sheep. See HERE.
9. There has been NO SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH, EVIDENCE OR EVALUATION of the effects of an array of solar panels upon the grassland. (9) For over a year, there has been a unique study carried out at Rampisham Down to monitor precisely this, yet DWT have consistently failed to engage with the study or present its results to their membership, choosing instead to rely on subjective unscientific statements. See HERE.
Predicated as it is on these inaccuracies, DWT leave themselves open to the accusation that their campaign misrepresents the situation in order to justify their existence in the face of impending cuts. For that reason, a Public Enquiry is to be welcomed, as it provides an opportunity for accurate information to be scrutinized in an open forum. Indeed, DWT may have to be careful what they wish for because as time goes on, more and more people are seeing that solar parks can preserve, enhance and enrich the environment in which they are placed. Who knows – they may prove to be the some of the SSSI of the future.
Hannah Lovegrove
Reference list.
1, 5.
3, 6.
https://action.wildlifetrusts.org/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=1823&ea.campaign.id=35104
2, 5, 6.
https://www.dorsetwildlifetrust.org.uk/rampisham-down-called-in
2, 4, 7, 9.
https://www.dorsetwildlifetrust.org.uk/rampishamdown.html
8. https://www.dorsetwildlifetrust.org.uk/hres/Rampisham%20Down_DWT_Call_in%20_letter_to_DCLG.pdf
