PLANS for a solar farm on the outskirts of Callington, which would be the first in the UK, have been unanimously rejected by the town council.

Councillors on?Tuesday said the 43 acres of agricultural land at Haye Lane was not suitable for the scheme by Sunpower Corporation UK Ltd for 15,000 solar photovoltaic panels when there were brownfield sites and areas of lower graded agricultural land in the area.

They also raised concerns over the narrow road to the site, which they said would be incapable of dealing with heavy construction traffic for up to six months, and the viability of the solar farm now the Government had reduced the subsidies for such schemes.

Speaking at the town council's planning meeting the Rev John Littlewood, representing Haye residents, said every household in the hamlet was against the application.

'The applicant's scheme will be visible by many residences in Callington,' he said. 'It will be the most prominent view from Kit Hill, which itself is a World Heritage Site with about 20,000 visitors a year.

'We will end up with an area of outstanding natural beauty and an area of great landscape value, sandwiching a 43-acre outstanding blot on the landscape.'

In a letter to the council, Sharon Jackson from Callington said the applicants admitted that if the feed-in tariffs — where renewable energy generators are paid a premium price for any electricity they produce — were not available it would not financially be worth their while.'

She claimed there had been 'a deluge of applications countywide' because of Government subsidies.

A second consultation event on the plans was recently held in Callington Town Hall by Sunpower after the town council requested it and more than 50 people came along.

Sunpower representative Jay Mitra said the access into Haye Lane would be via Redmoor Road and South Hill Road and a complete traffic survey would have to be approved by Cornwall Council before the plan went ahead.?But he added that there had been no negative comments by highways officers so far.

The energy produced by the five megawatt scheme would be enough to power 1,000 households and would be fed into the national grid. The company said it would put £25,000 into the local community each year for 25 years for sustainable living projects.

Mr Mitra said the construction of the site would probably take no more than four months and would not make much more of an impact than the usual farm traffic using that road.

He said the sound coming from the site would be minimal and would consist of a tick of the motors every 15 minutes.

He added that in the short term the site would not be viable but there was new information coming out all the time from the Government and that could change.

Cllr Jeremy Gist said: 'I do not think the application merits our approval. I believe there is isolated adequate lower grade land that could be used or brownfield sites.

'There are issues of access, and financially, without a considerable subsidy by taxpayers by way of a feed-in-tariff, this is not a viable scheme.'