{"id":671649,"date":"2026-01-03T18:03:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T18:03:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/671649\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T18:03:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T18:03:14","slug":"campaigners-to-challenge-selby-solar-farm-plans-in-high-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/671649\/","title":{"rendered":"Campaigners to challenge Selby solar farm plans in High Court"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">A campaign group is hoping to launch a legal challenge against the government&#8217;s decision to approve plans for a solar farm in North Yorkshire.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">The 190MW Helios solar farm, near Selby, was granted permission by the government despite campaigners arguing it would industrialise the rural area and impact on the lives of local people.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Now, campaign group HALT has begun fundraising after it received legal advice that a judicial review of the decision had a good chance of success.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">HALT&#8217;s Byron Ward said the group believed there were &#8220;serious and arguable legal flaws&#8221; in the planning decision &#8220;which can only be tested by bringing a judicial review.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">He said the group was hoping to raise more than \u00a315,000, with about \u00a37,500 already pledged, and submit the review within days.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">In December, Energy Minister Martin McCluskey said the project was a step towards making Britain a clean energy superpower.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">He said: &#8220;Families in Yorkshire have seen their energy bills go through the roof as a result of our exposure to volatile gas prices.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;The only way to make British people better off in the long-term is by securing clean, homegrown power that we control.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\"><a target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/lnp\/ldrs\" class=\"sc-f9178328-0 iCaRzc\" rel=\"noopener\">According to the Local Democracy Reporting Service<\/a>, the project will be one of the largest of its kind in the UK, covering 476 hectares of agricultural land to the west of Camblesforth.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">The application for the solar farm, submitted by Enso Energy and Cero Generation,  includes a battery energy storage scheme (BESS) that connect to the grid via underground cable at nearby Drax power station.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Developer Enso Energy said the site would provide enough energy to power 47,500 homes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A campaign group is hoping to launch a legal challenge against the government&#8217;s decision to approve plans for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":671650,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-671649","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-northern-ireland","14":"tag-scotland","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115832488161512215","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=671649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/671650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}