Reepham Life

Re Hugh Ivins’ comments (Your Letters, 25 April 2025), how is it that such a major decision affecting thousands of Broadland residents be made by three members of a committee of Broadland District Council?

Given also the absence of several of the planning committee, surely such a decision should have been passed to the full council to make the final decision.

It sounds as if the committee had been lent on, especially when the chair of the committee, being fully aware of the scale and nature of the objections, used her vote to accept the proposal.

Given the planned large-scale solar farms in the Dereham/Swaffham area and around Long Stratton, which it is said will generate far more electricity than is needed in Norfolk, no further solar farms should be allowed, especially on greenfield sites.

What can be done to investigate the actions of the Broadland Planning Committee?

Bryan Gostling, Bircham Road, Reepham

Those of us who travel along the Norwich/Reepham Road (I've often wondered where one becomes the other) are delighted that so many potholes have been filled.

Many thanks are due to the team that did the work and to whoever organised it.

Stephen Howard, Norwich

Further to the news item in Reepham Life (Mobile phone coverage boost to town centre, 21 March 2025), the mobile phone signal now transmitting from/to St Michael’s tower is the result of a contract between the installation company, Net Coverage Solutions (NET CS), and Reepham Parochial Church Council (PCC), which was signed about three years ago; there has been no direct input or influence from political councillors, MPs or other agencies.

The time since then has been spent creating and installing the necessary infrastructure in and around the tower.

This has been a slow process, both gaining the necessary approvals and because the NET CS engineers have been involved in similar projects around the country; there have also been changes to technical requirements en route.

An early part of the work was copying some of the bell chamber wooden louvres on all four sides of St Michael’s tower and replacing them with identical fibreglass louvres to allow the signal to penetrate.

Electrical power and lighting was installed in the tower, a steel framework was fitted in the clock chamber to take the weight of the transmission equipment, and a fibre-optic cable was laid joining the Reepham telecoms exchange to the church.

The work was completed on 11 March and the antennae went live that day. These are designed to broadcast mobile signals from any provider if they wish; so far only Vodafone has signed-up, so it is only Vodafone users who are currently seeing the benefit, but it is hoped and expected that other providers may join.

From virtually no Vodafone signal around the centre of Reepham, there is now a four-bar strength and this even extends to improving the signal up to a mile away, depending on location and the availability of other transmitters.

It has been a lengthy project, but Reepham PCC is glad that, 800 years on, its iconic, listed church buildings in the heart of this “best place to live in Norfolk” are continuing to spread the message, both spiritual and secular.

Rupert Birtles, Reepham Parochial Church Council

I would like to respond to a number of points raised in Rachael Richmond’s letter of 31 October.

It is undoubtably important that we find greener and better ways to produce electricity. We should, however, be extremely concerned if being self-sufficient in electricity is seen as more important than being self-sufficient in food.

It is hard to see how land that is currently graded as BMV (best and most versatile) could possibly be improved – certainly not by covering it in solar panels, seeding a monoculture of shade-tolerant meadow grass and then farming large numbers of sheep on it.

Large parts of the land would be in permanent shade and 40 years of rainwater run-off from the panels (with associated erosion and compaction) is unlikely to improve any soil.

Organic food production does not require “agricultural sprays”. What guarantees are there that herbicides will not be used in the control of saplings and weeds around the panels?

It would also be necessary to do a full comparison of the potential environmental impact of high-volume sheep farming (including faecal run-off to our rivers, greenhouse gas emissions and chemicals used in sheep-dips) versus using the land for other types of food production.

What would the effect be on birds and bats from covering large areas of countryside in panels, including the impact of tonal buzzing and humming? What effect also on the local climate of covering the land in this manner?

It should not be forgotten that the Pettywell proposal includes two acres to be covered by a battery-farm and associated concrete. The risk of fire and prolonged toxic output from these battery farms in such an event has meant that some countries have banned them.

Thousands of solar panels and the battery farm will need removing, transporting and recycling at the end of 40 years, not forgetting the fencing, CCTV masts, transformer blocks and associated concrete for these. Who will manage this and pick up the cost of this expensive process?

Global environmental issues should also be considered. There are increasing concerns from scientists and environmentalists about the impact of solar farms on the planet and the problems they are storing up:

• By building solar farms on prime agricultural land some estimates suggest that “quadrillions” of calories have already been taken out of food supply – enough to feed millions of people.
• The current (ageing) technology for solar panel manufacture uses raw materials that are causing illness and pollution during extraction, use toxic chemicals in production, produce toxic waste and use large amounts of water.
• The transportation of the panels from China and across the UK will further increase the carbon footprint.
   

Huge swathes of Norfolk countryside are currently under threat from several bids for giant solar farms from organisations set to make massive profits from them.

It is important that “greenwash” marketing by these organisations does not go unchallenged.

Are we really doing future generations any favours by rolling out this ageing technology across our vital farmland and countryside or are we in fact creating even more problems for them?

Jacqui Wash, Whitwell Street