Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 11 June 2025 to Question 56079 on Agriculture: Land Use, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that planning decisions on solar farms are informed by up-to-date assessments of local agricultural productivity and landscape sensitivity.

This Government places great importance upon our agricultural land and food production and has committed to empower Protected Landscapes to become greener, wilder and more accessible.

There are established routes in the planning system to consider the impacts of renewable and low carbon energy projects, as well as processes to enable communities to engage in the consultation of applications.

Where a proposal involves agricultural land, the National Planning Policy Framework sets out how the best and most versatile agricultural land should be reflected in planning policies and decisions, making clear that where significant development of agricultural land is demonstrated to be necessary, areas of poorer quality land should be preferred to those of a higher quality. This will, where relevant, be a material consideration in planning decisions, including those made by the Secretary of State. Guidance on assessing development proposals on agricultural land is available from Natural England to ensure decisions are informed by up-to-date assessments of agricultural land.