Trerice Solar Farm planning appeal overturns Cornwall Council refusal

The Trerice Solar Farm planning appeal has ended in approval, with a government planning inspector granting consent for the 32MW solar farm and 45MW battery energy storage system (BESS) in St Dennis, Cornwall, overruling a local authority decision that had gone against the project, according to Voice Newspapers.

What the Trerice Solar Farm Planning Appeal Overturned

The route to consent was not straightforward. St Dennis Parish Council records show that Cornwall councillors voted five-to-four to refuse planning permission, making the inspector’s decision to allow Statkraft’s appeal the decisive move that brought the project back from the brink.

The project itself also changed shape during development. Following a consultation event in October 2024, Statkraft renamed the scheme from Treviscoe Solar Farm to Trerice Solar Farm, according to the Statkraft Projects page. That renaming matters in one narrow sense: anyone tracking the application under its earlier title needs to know the two are the same development.

The consented scheme comprises the solar farm, the BESS and associated infrastructure. Statkraft says the project will generate enough renewable electricity every year to power the equivalent of over 10,000 homes. Those are the headline numbers. They are worth contextualising: a 32MW installation is a mid-scale development, not a nationally strategic project. Its contribution to Great Britain’s grid is real but modest in isolation.

Forty Years of Business Rates and Community Funding

The financial case Statkraft is making to Cornwall is grounded in duration as much as scale. The project is expected to generate an estimated £1.6 million in business rates for Cornwall Council over its 40-year operational lifespan, alongside opportunities for local businesses and suppliers during construction and annual Community Benefit Funding once operational.

The 40-year figure is worth noting, not because it is unusual for solar assets (operational lifespans of that length are increasingly common as panel degradation curves have improved), but because it anchors the financial commitment to the local authority in a way that a shorter-lived project would not. A council that voted five-to-four to refuse this development will now collect that revenue regardless.

Statkraft also says the project will deliver biodiversity improvements across the site and more than 1.4km of new permissive footpaths. Biodiversity net gain is a planning requirement rather than a voluntary gesture in England, so the commitment sits within the regulatory baseline rather than above it. Whether the specific gains are material is a question the specialist surveys behind the application should answer; the planning inspector, evidently, was satisfied.

The proposals were informed by two periods of public consultation, with feedback from the local community and other stakeholders described by Statkraft as having helped shape the approved plans. Given that the local authority still refused, the weight of that consultation clearly did not override all objections at committee stage.

Harry Venables, Statkraft’s solar project manager for the scheme, said the farm ‘will mean more home-grown power on Great Britain’s grid network’ and that it ‘will help achieve greater energy security, and reduce our reliance on expensive and volatile overseas gas supplies.’ He added: ‘We are delighted to have secured consent for this scheme after a successful appeal.’

The energy security framing is standard for UK solar applications at present and is not wrong. The BESS component is, in some respects, the more operationally interesting part of the consented scheme. A 45MW battery paired with a 32MW generation asset gives the project meaningful flexibility to shift output and capture grid-balancing revenue, which is where a growing share of the commercial case for co-located storage now sits. Statkraft has not disclosed dispatch or revenue arrangements for the storage element.

With consent now secured, the Trerice Solar Farm planning appeal chapter is closed. Construction timelines and procurement for local supply chains are the next concrete steps Statkraft has indicated, though no dates have been confirmed.