Ed Milibands Solar Land Grab British Farmers Fight Back Against Compulsory Acquisition

When Sarah Pye and her partner Doug Knight purchased their rural property on Anglesey, Wales, they imagined years of peaceful countryside living and a flourishing tourism business. Their dreams were upended by an unexpected series of letters from LightsourceBP, a solar energy firm, warning that their land might be forcibly acquired to make way for a sprawling 3200 acre solar installation. Four years of hard work, including 4000 newly planted trees for a woodland camper van site, now seem at risk of being erased by compulsory acquisition powers granted to private developers under UK law.

Sarah is not alone. Across the UK, farmers and rural residents are facing the threat of losing land to giant solar farms under the Planning Act 2008. Old Hall Farm in Norfolk, run by Rebecca and Stuart Mayhew, finds itself in the path of the 2500 acre East Pye Solar Project. The developers own little of the land required and aim to obtain the rest via buying, leasing or, failing that, compulsory purchase powers. The legislation, originally intended to speed up nationally significant infrastructure, now hands private renewable developers the power once reserved for government—provided a public interest case can be made.

Island Green Power, fully owned by Australian investment giant Macquarie since May, is one of several companies leveraging these rights in pursuit of massive solar projects across England and Wales. Entire villages such as Hempnall, Saxlingham and Tasburgh could be encircled by solar fields, upending lives and business models built over generations. Residents like 89 year old Yvonne Davy have voiced fierce opposition, concerned about the visual impact and loss of productive farmland, while others fear knock on effects for local employment and tourism.

Industry defenders argue that compulsory acquisition is only a last resort, with a strong preference to secure voluntary deals with landowners. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero maintains that stringent planning rules exist and that compensation will be fair, emphasising Britain’s need to accelerate clean energy if it is to hit net zero targets and triple solar capacity by 2035. Project developers are encouraged to prefer brownfield or lower quality agricultural sites, yet significant tracts of prime farmland are already earmarked for conversion.

According to David Rogers, professor of ecology at Oxford and founder of SolarQ, Britain now faces the largest transfer of high quality private farmland in decades, much of it ultimately controlled by foreign corporations. With approximately 2000 square kilometres of farmland set to be covered in solar panels, hundreds if not thousands of families could see their livelihoods and investments swept aside in the pursuit of national clean energy ambitions.

As debate intensifies, a backlash is building in rural communities, pitting the imperatives of climate policy against the interests of local property owners, farmers and rural businesses. The story of Sarah Pye and her family on Anglesey is rapidly becoming emblematic of a wider tension at the heart of the green transition—who shoulders the cost and whether it is the countryside that must always pay the price of progress.