A 44-hectare solar farm at Braunton close to the North Devon coast has been given planning approval behind closed doors.

Planning officers made the decision which opponents said would “industrialise the countryside” under delegated powers.

In a statement North Devon Council said it was not within the “public interest” for the proposal to be determined by the planning committee given the “modest” number of objections which totalled 17.

Neither had any of the three ward members called the proposal in to be discussed by councillors within 28 days of the planning application being received.

Exagen Development was behind the scheme for the  solar array along with a substation, cabling, CCTV and fencing on farmland south of Buttercombe Lane, Braunton.

Braunton Parish Council initially lodged opposition saying it would prefer to see buildings and car parks used to install solar panels rather than agricultural land and feared it would set a precedent for further solar panels in the adjacent fields but changed its mind in January and backed the plans.

Village campaign group Love Braunton said the proposal would “industrialise the countryside outside of the development boundary of Braunton, with the potential loss of 44 hectares of agricultural land” and cause traffic issues during construction through villages and along narrow lanes.

The organisation said the Environment Agency and Natural England raising no objection to the scheme was “disappointing”.

“We would have hoped that these agencies would be advocating government advice for small scale solar farms which is applicable to this application,” it said.

Members of the public raised concerns over highways safety, visual impact and land use.

Following a public consultation the applicants revised plans to route construction traffic from A-roads to the north, using the roundabout at Mullacott Cross and then exiting the A361 at Heddon Mill, rather than through the villages of Knowle and Braunton.

Amendments were also made to use five fields instead of 12  for the panels and an access road through the wider landscape and additional trees and hedging to reduce visual impact.

The energy produced from the 15MW solar farm, enough to power 6,600 homes, will feed back into the grid and the site will  be decommissioned in 40 years.

Planning officers said given the significant renewable energy benefits, the temporary and reversible nature of the proposal, and the ability to mitigate environmental, landscape, heritage, ecological and highway impacts, “very significant weight” must be afforded to the renewable energy generation delivered by the scheme. 

They said it was acceptable subject to detailed assessments and conditions.

But countryside campaign group the Devon CPRE, which opposed the plans along with a solar cluster at Alverdiscott further down the North Devon coast, said it was “dismayed” that it was not debated at committee, given the number of similar contentious proposals which had been granted or proposed for the North Devon countryside.

It claimed the application was “littered with errors” including figures for which the applicant had no evidence or calculations.

Devon CPRE director Penny Mills said: “Not only are we utterly disappointed with the decision, we are also dismayed that it didn’t even go before the planning committee for discussion. The council must be aware of how controversial these applications are yet they decided that losing another 100 acres of farmland did not warrant going before the committee and they didn’t give the public the chance to put their views in person.

Many of the objections weren’t considered relevant or sufficient to justify a refusal.”

North Devon planners said the landscape was “not a pristine or undeveloped rural setting” and it already accommodated renewable energy infrastructure such as Fullabrook Down Wind Farm approximately 0.84km to the west, forming a prominent feature within the landscape, and an existing solar farm at Luscott Barton, Ashford, located approximately 750m to the west.