Issue - meetings
PRESENTATIONS
Meeting: 14/01/2026 - Cabinet Panel on the Environment (Item 14)
PRESENTATIONS
To receive presentations from the following organisations:
1) Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation – Environment Update
2) Green Heat Coop – Community Energy
Decision:
Presentations were received from Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation on ‘Environmental Updates’ and Green Heat Coop on ‘Community Energy’.
Minutes:
Audio recording – 25 minutes 1 second
The Chair invited Kris Karslake from Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation to give a verbal presentation on ‘Environmental Updates’. They thanked the Chair for the opportunity to present and advised that:
· The work of the Heritage Foundation was guided by the aims within Strategy 2028.
· One of these aims was financial resilience and to address this aim, they had successfully obtained funding through the Great British Energy Fund to conduct a feasibility study on their rural estate to assess the potential for renewable energy generation.
· A contractor called Seen had been commissioned to carry out the study, and two sample locations with the highest suitability had been selected.
· They were waiting to hear back from UK Power Networks on the infrastructure cost for those locations.
· They were unsure what size solar array would be deemed feasible, however, it was revealed that a five-megawatt peak solar array would be enough to power 1,375 homes and require less than 1% of their rural estate.
· Income generation from the project would be maximised to benefit residents through their charitable activities and grants programme.
· It was still unknown who would design, construct, operate and maintain the solar array, or if a community share option would offer the best value.
· Development of this kind on Green Belt land would also conflict with the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), unless the Heritage Foundation could clearly demonstrate that the benefits of a ‘Solar Meadow’ would outweigh the harms.
· Any proposal would also be affected by their charitable objective of preserving the environment and the Garden City ethos of local food production and guarding the countryside surrounding Letchworth.
· A board paper would be presented to the Board of Trustees if one of the selected locations was deemed to be feasible.
· Solar arrays were preferable on rural land rather than buildings as they could be reversible developments and support biodiversity improvements during their operation, whereas not all of their buildings were technically or economically suitable for solar panels.
· They would progress to pre-application advice with the Council if UK Power Networks judged one of the sites to be financially sustainable.
In response to a question from Fiona Hughes, Kris Karslake advised that they were hoping to know by summer whether solar arrays would be feasible at the selected locations.
The Chair thanked Kris Karslake for their presentation and invited Fiona Hughes from Green Heat Coop to give a presentation on ‘Community Energy’. They thanked the Chair for the opportunity to present and advised that:
· Green Heat Coop were a non-profit community energy business.
· Community energy was about keeping the benefits of energy use in local communities, rather than losing them to large companies or hostile nations.
· Not-for-profit companies or cooperatives that used democratic business models were used to invest in community energy in the form of renewable energy generation.
· They could also provide advice and services to residents related to home energy, and surplus funds from these schemes could be reinvested into ... view the full minutes text for item 14