Last month, Sam Griffiths (Director in our Landscape team) and I were delighted to share our insights with the National Infrastructure Planning Association (NIPA) members as part of their Lunch and Learn series. Luckily for us, our ‘example project’ – One Earth Solar Farm – was approved by the Secretary of State a week later.  

On that project, we successfully acted in Design Lead and Heritage roles respectively, alongside a wider Iceni team on Landscape, Archaeology and Health Impact. One Earth is the second largest solar farm in the UK and will power over 200,000 homes – a truly fantastic project to be a part of!  

However, for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs), heritage can too often be treated as an assessment output, rather than an intrinsic piece of the design puzzle. 

Heritage is rarely a straightforward issue on renewable energy and infrastructure schemes. Statutory duties require great weight to be given to the preservation or enhancement of designated heritage assets (listed buildings, conservation areas and scheduled monuments), and non-designated assets are material considerations in decision-making. Because NSIPs operate at scale, their potential impact on heritage assets can be significant, and the opportunities to mitigate or enhance are often more limited than other types of development. Heritage issues are also inherently perceptual, resting on professional judgement about significance and setting rather than fixed boundaries or simple buffer zones.   

Having worked on several large infrastructure projects recently, my top tips for heritage would be: 

1. Go beyond the ‘BRAG’ stage (where environmental topics identify potential issues and grade risk levels). Take it a step further to consider what ‘best case’ mitigation could look like and whether there are opportunities for heritage benefits, like improving public access or interpretation. 

1. Think creatively about mitigation; the answer is not always strategic planting or a setback – and even where it is, understanding historic field boundaries, landscape arrangements, ownership patterns and parish boundaries may help you better define these measures. 

1. Develop risk management strategies – the Design Lead will be balancing competing factors across many environmental topics and not every issue can be resolved. Therefore, identifying where constraints overlap, speaking to stakeholders and prioritising issues based on project risk will help them develop the most effective mitigation strategy.    

We have found our approach facilitates more effective engagement, reduces examination risk, and supports a stronger project overall.  

This is how we approached One Earth Solar Farm and we were delighted to see it become the 30th clean energy project approved by the Secretary of State in this government. 

Want to know more about managing heritage impact on large and complex projects? Contact Georgia Foy in our Built Heritage and Townscape team and she will be happy to help.