Torbay solar farm locations revealed

£5 million schemes for the Bay

The locations of two proposed solar farms in Torbay have been revealed.

They are a £2.2 million scheme at Nightingale Park in Torquay and a £2.75 million scheme at Brokenbury, between Paignton and Brixham.

The estimated total costs for the schemes are on a list of Torbay Council’s capital projects, giving the first official confirmation of the sites.

Nightingale Park is a former waste tip near The Willows housing estate and retail centres at the north of Torquay. The site for the Brokenbury solar farm is believed to be a field behind the water treatment works at Churston.

The council’s cabinet has approved going ahead with the schemes, funded by borrowing under the authority’s £100 million economic growth fund.

The open land at Nightingale Park is popular with dog walkers and had been proposed as the site of a new stadium for Torquay United. But the club scrapped the idea in 2019 after it was effectively blocked by the council.

A budget report to the council’s scrutiny board says significant investment in the two solar farms is expected in the next financial year. The board, which monitors council decisions, has welcomed the projects. But it says more needs to be done to tackle the climate emergency as spending on the solar farms makes up just 5 per cent of the capital programme for 2021/22.

In a recommendation to the council’s cabinet approved at a meeting of the board on Wednesday night, it  calls for a “more ambitious approach” to make council buildings carbon-neutral. It says targets for tree-planting, rewilding and the encouragement of walking and cycling are “urgently required”.

The recommendation said: “The panel felt that a more robust approach to this issue is needed if we are to progress towards our goal of a carbon neutral future and to achieve savings over the medium term from energy-saving measures.”

The authority has declared a climate emergency and said it wants to become carbon neutral by 2030, ahead of the government target of 2050. Both solar farms would need planning permission to allow them to go ahead. The cabinet has been told the Nightingale Park scheme could generate up to 3 megawatt-hours of electricity – enough to supply around 900 homes.

Councillors heard the solar farm plans would support the authority’s climate emergency plans. The installations would generate income for the council from the sale of the electricity and some of the money could be diverted to a “community dividend” for schemes to benefit local people. The electricity could be used directly by nearby buildings, be sold to a third party or go into the power network.

The council has created an economic growth fund of up to £100 million of borrowing for schemes to support economic growth and regeneration in Torbay.  The cost of borrowing is funded by income from the schemes.