00:00My name is Caroline Grant and I'm the lead for the Stop the Mile in Lear project, which is actually being delivered by Strattcraft.
00:07It's a solar farm, equivalent to 3,000 acres, 4.7 square miles.
00:13To get a feel for the magnitude of the size, you're talking about the largest industrial park in Europe, which is Trafford Park, which is also 4.7 square miles.
00:23Behind me is a field, this is just a grass field, but it's obviously very rich in wildlife.
00:28You probably can see there are house martins, etc.
00:32Now, it's not just grass fields that are being taken out of production and use.
00:37It's actually all the agricultural land, all the nature corridors as well.
00:42A lot of the HROs that are central to the project will be actually taken out and new HROs, etc. installed.
00:51Now, that is a big thing for the wildlife because they need that for the wildlife corridors, the ancient woodland, the ancient trees,
00:58and all the hedgerows.
01:01With regard to the solar themselves, like I say, they're up to 5.5 metres high.
01:05These are significant.
01:07And they need to be cleaned because to be efficient, they need to be using chemicals and other such things like water,
01:13which we are obviously in a drought condition at the moment,
01:17which would actually be a massive impact if we're using chemicals and water.
01:20And that then gets into the ground.
01:23So, these agricultural land, the agricultural land will never re-return to the agriculture
01:28after the 40, 60 years of chemicals and water such like that.
01:33The actual farms themselves are surrounded by 2.2 metre high perimeter fencing with CCTV.
01:39So, this is going to be an absolute eyesore, more like a prison system in our community.
