A huge solar farm is set to power almost half of a Kent ‘garden town’ and make millions for the council behind the plan.

Folkestone and Hythe District Council (FHDC) wants to build the facility on agricultural land in Court-at-Street, Lympne, near the Otterpool Park site.

In April 2023, FHDC gave planning permission for the first 8,500 homes at the development - a whole new town to be built on and around the former Folkestone Racecourse near Sellindge.

The final goal is to have about 10,000 homes at the project, which has been in the works in some form since 2012.

Shortly after planning permission was granted, FHDC’s cabinet voted unanimously in July 2023 to explore the possibility of solar energy generation at the site, with a view to meeting 40% of the new town’s energy needs.

And at a meeting of the authority’s Green cabinet last week, it was revealed the scheme will generate £21m over the next three decades.

Council leader Cllr Jim Martin (Green) explained the plans are part of the move towards “creating a credible pathway to a net-zero exemplar development”.

“One of the beauties of this is that the solar installation builds with the development,” he said.

“There’s no point putting panels in the field when you haven’t got houses to connect them to.

“So the early panels will offset some of the embodied energy of the construction process.

“Anything that reduces the embodied energy in construction is seen as a good thing - construction is a carbon hungry process.”

The solar farm, which could expand onto neighbouring land in future years, is set to be run by renewables firm SNRG.

Documents explain the site will be built in phases - phase one covering an area of about 47 acres, and the second covering 49.

Each of the two arrays are meant to generate 12 megawatts (MW) of power each.

Solar panels can be placed on the individual houses at the discretion of developers who come forward to build the homes, but Cllr Gary Fuller (Lib Dem) explained part of why the array is needed is “because the rooftop solar won’t be sufficient to provide all of the energy for the site once it’s complete”.

However, the report notes the solar arrays and the rooftop panels between them could power “50% of the average annual demand of the 8,500 homes”.

Deputy leader of FHDC, Cllr Tim Prater (Lib Dem), argued that having large solar arrays would in fact minimise the risk of even more development near Otterpool.

“If there’s a contract for 30 years that’s the best defence that any local resident could have against somebody building on that field,” he said.

“It’s become something that a successor authority can't look at and go that’s an appropriate site for a 600-home housing estate and sell it to a property developer for £60 million.”

FHDC is due to be abolished in the new government’s reorganisation of local councils, so the ownership of the land will transfer to another authority in coming years.

The fields where the solar arrays will be built are currently agricultural, and make £9,370 a year off it in rent.

However, when it becomes a solar farm that rent will skyrocket to £120,000 per year.

With rent, connection fees and royalty payments to the council, the solar plans “will generate £21m over the 30-year build-out period until 2058,” the report reads.

The meeting also heard energy will be distributed by a “heat vault” - a large underground chamber filled with liquid which is used to store solar energy for a long time to be used when needed.

Planning applications will need to be put in for the solar arrays in future, but some residents have already opposed the scheme, decrying the loss of arable countryside.

Former Conservative Party leader Lord Michael Howard of Lympne has come out against the plans, previously telling KentOnline he too fears the loss of land which should be used to grow food.

The update on the solar farm comes as FHDC’s timeline for building 800 homes a year until 2045 is revealed.

FHDC is being made, along with all other councils, to prepare a 15-year plan for housebuilding to show the government in the face of increased housing targets.

At the cabinet meeting, Cllr Martin said the authority had received a letter from Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner.

He explained: “The timetable is likely to need revision in a few months when more detail is published, but the deputy PM’s letter raises the possibility of intervention if authorities do not respond to her request.

“We don’t want to upset Angela at the moment, believe me.”

The Labour government elected in July promised to “get Britain building again”, and has overseen changes to national planning rules designed to make it harder for councils to refuse development.

Additionally, housing targets for every council in the country were recalculated with the new planning rules late last year.

FHDC’s yearly construction target went up 17% by the change - from 735 to 859.

Cllr Martin continued: “We are very good at our Local Plan, we’ve got an excellent Local Plan and we’ve got a tradition of being up to date with our Local Plan.”

FHDC was already in the process of preparing its Local Plan, but due to changes in legislation, councils are required to send updated ‘local development schemes’ to the government by March 6.

The new rules were brought in on December 12 last year.

Cllr Stephen Scoffham (Green) praised the fact council officers are “ahead of the game insofar as it’s possible to be ahead of the game when the goalposts seem to be pretty capable of shifting at short notice, but I feel we’re in very good hands with the officers who are working on this”.

In council documents, the authority gives a provisional timetable saying they will submit its Local Plan, which lasts until 2045, in April 2027, and assuming the government does not alter it - it should be adopted by October 2027.

A council spokesman said: “The development of Otterpool Park accounts for just over 40% of the housing provision.

“The remainder is made up of other large sites that are allocated in the plan, such as Folkestone seafront and Nickolls Quarry in Hythe – where the Martello Lakes development has been built – and a range of smaller sites in the Local Plan, in addition to existing planning permissions.

“The new national housing targets are higher than our current targets, and so we will need to find other sites in addition to Otterpool Park.

“We opened the call for sites in late 2024, but we’re preparing to undertake more publicity to make sure that we reach as many landowners as we can and have explored all potential development sites that we can.”

FHDC’s cabinet voted to submit its timetable to the government.