“A blow to our villages”: our candidates react to the Springwell decision
Our Branch Chair and the Reform UK candidates standing in the villages around Springwell respond to the High Court’s decision to refuse the challenge.
On Wednesday 11 November 2026, the High Court refused the challenge brought by Reform UK-led Lincolnshire County Council and North Kesteven District Council against Springwell Solar Farm. Approved by Labour’s Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband, in April, the scheme will cover around 3,100 acres of farmland around Navenby, Ashby de la Launde, Digby, Scopwick and Metheringham with solar panels and battery storage.
These are the villages our candidates live in, campaign in and are standing to represent. Here is what they, and our Branch Chair, had to say.
“I am extremely disappointed to see this judicial review refused. This project has ridden roughshod over the people who live in the villages it will surround, and who will have to live alongside it for decades to come.
We should not be covering thousands of acres of our most prized farmland with imported solar panels, especially at a time when global supply chains are under such strain. We should be backing our farmers to grow the food that feeds the British people, and putting solar on rooftops, warehouses and brownfield land, not on the fields that feed us.
I hope this decision can yet be overturned, and that the people of Navenby, Ashby de la Launde, Digby, Scopwick and Metheringham can keep their historic villages and the countryside around them, rather than see them turned into a net zero playground.
The Conservatives and Labour have led us down the net zero path. The only way out of it is Reform UK.”
“Today’s High Court decision to reject the judicial review into Springwell Solar Farm is a disgraceful betrayal of Lincolnshire’s communities and of British farming.
For years, both the Tories and Labour have treated our county like an industrial dumping ground. The Conservatives paved the way for this madness when they wrote net zero into law, and Labour has put it on steroids with Ed Miliband’s reckless net zero zealotry.
Together, the Uniparty has decided that covering over 3,000 acres of prime, productive Lincolnshire farmland in imported glass and steel matters more than feeding our own nation.
Local residents and elected councils have been completely steamrolled by Westminster’s obsession with unreliable, subsidised green vanity projects that drive up bills and ruin our countryside.
The courts may have closed this door today, but Reform UK will never stop fighting this rural vandalism. It’s time to scrap net zero, sack the Uniparty, back British farmers and put Lincolnshire first.”
“Lincolnshire is defined by its open countryside, its productive farmland and its rural communities. A scheme on the scale of Springwell puts all three at risk, for decades to come.
Lincolnshire helps feed the nation. Covering thousands of acres of good farmland in solar panels, when Britain should be growing more of its own food, is the wrong choice. Solar also produces least in winter, when we need power the most, so the land we give up buys far less dependable energy than the headline figures suggest.
Residents also deserve real confidence on the long-term questions: that the cost of removing the panels and restoring the land is properly guaranteed, and that the battery storage is safe, from fire prevention to the risk of contaminated firewater reaching our fields and watercourses if a serious incident occurs.
For the people who live here, this is not an abstract planning question. It changes the landscape around their homes for a generation. Britain needs secure, affordable energy, but not at the expense of our best farmland and our countryside. This is the wrong scheme in the wrong place.”
“The High Court’s decision is a blow to Lincolnshire communities. The County Council was right to challenge it. Residents here will live with around 3,100 acres of industrial solar on some of Britain’s best farmland, yet the decision was made in Whitehall, by a Labour government that has ignored local voices at every stage.
This is the cost of net zero at any cost. Prime agricultural land that should be feeding the country is being given over to panels, while the substation Springwell needs to connect to the grid has not even been approved, and there is a fight still to come at Navenby.
A Reform UK government would scrap net zero, scrap the subsidies that make these schemes so profitable for developers, and put food security and local communities first.
I will continue to stand against the Navenby substation.”
“Rural communities should not be treated as convenient locations for national infrastructure simply because there are fewer people to object. They deserve the same consideration as any other community. That people’s livelihoods, concerns and quality of life have not been fully heard, and have instead been refused consideration, is more than concerning.
It is deeply troubling that the current Government’s will can simply be imposed on local residents. What accountability really exists when that can override local consent?”
Where Reform UK stands
Springwell was signed off by a Labour minister, under the net zero laws the Conservatives put in place when they were in government. Between them, the two old parties have made giant solar farms on our best farmland the default, with the biggest decisions taken in Whitehall rather than by the people who have to live with them.
Reform UK will scrap net zero and the subsidies and green levies that drive schemes like Springwell, put food security first, and make the case for solar on rooftops and brownfield sites, not on the fields that feed us. Locally, our candidates will keep standing up for these villages, and we will keep fighting the Navenby substation that Springwell depends on.
