Holt Farm – is a proposed 26,551 megawatt (MWh per year) solar farm on land to the north of the M3 on the opposing side of the railway from Hook. The site covers 22.86 Ha (27.22 Ha including access) with the River Whitewater running from South to North through the Eastern end of the site.
Screening opinion
In April 2025, Wessex Solar Energy submitted a request for a screening opinion (25/00640/EIA). A screening opinion is where the developer can ask the council for an assessment of whether an Environmental Impact Assessment report is required prior to a full planning application
In relation to the screening opinion, Hart District Council decided that an Environmental Impact Assessment was not required prior to a full planning application.
Public consultation
The ‘public consultation’ was pitiful but was attended by the WVCS and we wait to see whether the developer submits a pre application or goes straight for a full application.
Planning application
A full planning application (22/00863/FUL) was submitted on 06 May 2025 consisting of 123 documents and attracted 30 comments from public (all but one opposing) and consultees.
The river Whitewater is a designated chalk stream, which the Environment Agency calls “one of the rarest freshwater habitats on Earth”. The solar farm scheme puts a bridge across it, panels in its floodplain and changes the land along its banks.
In November 2025, the Environment Agency objected to the proposal twice, saying no compensation had been offered for the permanent shading of the river by the new bridge. In March 2026, it withdrew those objections, but only subject to conditions.
WVCS objection
The Whitewater Valley Conservation Society objected to the solar farm proposal in February 2026 and spoke in objection to it at Hart’s Development and Planning Committee on 21/10/2026.
The Environment Agency’s conditions say no development may start until a river buffer scheme is approved, including in-channel works. Those designs have not been submitted to Hart. The applicant’s own letter calls them “preliminary”.
The shading is permanent. Compensation elsewhere in the channel is not the same as no harm.
So the river’s protection rests on the buffer and landscape conditions being delivered. We have seen what happens at Bunkers Hill.
There, Condition 7 protected the Whitewater with a natural buffer and Condition 13 required landscape management. Both were formally discharged on the ecologist’s advice. In April 2025 we found the river meadow buffer not established, around forty per cent of the hedgerow failed, trees dying with no watering, and no sign of maintenance. We reported it to Council enforcement (https://whitewatervalley.org.uk/news/bunkers-hill-solar-farm-complaint/). To date, nothing has changed.
This is not only about silt or pollution. It is about the buffer and landscape that protect the river simply not being delivered.
Habitat lost while a buffer fails to establish is not recovered by a condition written afterwards. And a landscape changed for the life of this scheme cannot be conditioned back.
Silt and pollution in a chalk stream does not wait for a site visit either.
We asked Councillors to refuse this application.
However, if Hart Councillors were minded to approve, we asked that the conditions require full-time independent ecological supervision of all works near the river, with the power to stop work, and that no works start until the river scheme is approved.
Hart’s planning decision
The Development and Planning Committee members voted 6 in favour and 4 against the proposal on 21/10/2026, citing concerns about access to the site during construction and impact on the River Whitewater.
