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  • 1 year ago
Nigel and Crystal Foster, aged 63 and 59, have lived in their four-bedroom farmhouse, Lord’s Moor Farm, in Bedale, North Yorks., since 1997, when they bought the 18th century farmhouse for £200,000.

But the semi-retired chartered surveyors say their lives have been turned upside down as their "peaceful, tranquil, and pastoral" views are under threat by plans for a massive 113-acre solar farm which would surround their isolated property.

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00:00I'm Nigel Foster and this is my wife Crystal. We're here at Lord's Moor Farm just outside
00:08Beedale and we've been here for 28 years now and during that time we've raised our family
00:16and had a great life here. We live a very outdoorsy existence and about 18 months ago we had some
00:26bad news that the neighbouring landowner was considering putting a solar farm on the land
00:32right around our house. He owns about 115 acres and our house was built right in the middle of it
00:39so it's not a great place for us to be and we're obviously very worried about that and we're
00:47opposing the planning application as indeed everyone in the nearby village of Exelby just
00:53behind me and then the nearby town of Beedale. No one wants it apart from the landowner and the
01:01solar developer, a company called Enviromina. So that's where we are at the moment. The planning
01:08application is submitted. We've got a petition going and we're nearly up to a thousand now, 850 I think
01:14we've got the signatures on that and as for the objections going in for the planning application
01:20I think we're up to about 130 now. Something like that. We've been 30 odd. Yeah and we hope that
01:26will get closer to 200 by the time they determine and decide whether they're going to grant it or not.
01:32I think it's a classic, what I'd describe as being a classic clash of cultures.
01:38The landowner comes from a background maybe of metropolitan private equity type commercial values
01:52as compared to us out here in the sticks where we have traditional family country based values and the
02:02two are not great bedfellows. They struggle alongside one another and that's quite a gap. It's a chasm
02:14and we're struggling. He's struggling with that and so are we and our positions really are irreconcilable
02:24so we're totally opposed to this scheme and we will fight it with everything we've got.
02:28We won't stop and hopefully he'll stop before we do. This has caused us lots of sleepless nights and I
02:36don't think that should be underestimated and mental anguish to the local residents in Exelby as well.
02:43You can't put a price on health really and just been able to go out into the countryside. I think we could
02:50have done this without all the support that we've had locally so all the parish councils in the area have
02:57voted to oppose this scheme so has the town council and actually the local residents particularly in Exelby but
03:05also in the town of Beedale are just heartbroken at the prospect of this area being industrialised. It's full of wildlife
03:16and actually it would be heartbreaking to see that dug up and fenced in industrialised really. So we set up the
03:27change.org Stealth Solar Farm website and petition with the help of the local residents. We've reached about
03:35850 verified signatures so far. That's amazing for a small scheme like this in a very rural area and what
03:45we'd like to do is see that hitting a thousand and then maybe two. And if we get up to those sort of
03:51figures we think the North Yorkshire County Council really will take that into account
03:55when they come to decide this application. It's bound to have some sort of impact on them.
04:25But you really don't think, where the people whoywate?
04:27But I know there are some sort of things that we're working on for them.
04:29I think we're looking for the many of them to try to find out that they're basically
04:30what are the most important things you do. And that's something that is
04:33about this. That's it for me.
04:35So also, people are looking for Cherokee City, who are doing well,
04:38and you're looking for other things that are all these people who are going to
04:40to come to the field of the field until they move to the field of experience.
04:43So we're looking for this path forward and looking for this kind of work out,
04:47so those people have the benefit of the field of the field to come to the field of the field,
04:47and that's really not going to be able to invest.
04:49And that's really in this idea of the field, and so do you know what we've done?
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