The cornerstone of this application has been the exemplary input we have received from our advisers, consultants and suppliers, without whom this outcome would never have been possible.”
Hugh Brennan & Simon McCarthy
Cleve Hill Solar Park Ltd.
Cleve Hill Solar Park
Photo credit: Arcus Consulting
Cleve Hill Solar Park is a solar and energy storage park situated on the north Kent coast which, when built, could provide enough affordable and clean electricity to power over 91,000 homes.
The solar park was granted a Development Consent Order (DCO) in May 2020 and became the UK's first Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project for solar photovoltaics. The government also granted consent for what would be the world’s largest battery installation on the site.
Arcus, an ERM Group Company, has supported the Cleve Hill developers, Wirsol and Hive Energy, through:
- Planning and DCO co-ordination;
- Full environmental impact assessment submission;
- Landscape, ecology and flood risk assessments; and
- Continued project management throughout the pre-consent phase.
The solar park will be capable of generating in excess of 350 MW of power with 700 MWh of energy storage on the north Kent coast of England, saving over 68,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year, and with no dependency on government subsidy.
This consent indicates the government's support for large-scale solar and energy storage developments.
Arcus is the only planning and environmental consultancy to have delivered a DCO consent for a solar project in the United Kingdom. We coordinated the project and the environmental impact assessment (EIA), delivering the key elements in-house (including DCO coordination, EIA coordination, planning, ecology, landscape, hydrology and flood risk, noise, air quality, climate change, socio-economics, cumulative effects and miscellaneous issues) and defended these successfully at DCO examination. We supported the project further with full engagement of our project manager in public consultation and led on the technical aspects of statutory consultation.
We continue to provide support to the project post-consent, through requirement discharge. Arcus was short-listed for a landscape design award for Cleve Hill, in the Landscape Institute awards 2020.
Our involvement in this first-of-its-kind project enables us to provide strategic advice, expertise and practical insights into large-scale renewables projects.