The Environment Agency warns that millions more properties may face flood risk by mid-century. So why was a vast solar development approved in countryside above communities with a documented history of flooding?
The warning concerns national exposure, not a prediction that individual fields at Carlton will flood. But the question for government, the developer and the authorities who must approve detailed drainage schemes is clear: how will local residents know the protections work in practice?
What the village photographs reveal
The photographs provide visible evidence of Carlton’s long experience with flooding, although they do not independently establish that a specific proposed solar field flooded, or that the images date from 1947 or 2007. In 1947 Parliament recorded a flood-related closure of the trunk road at Carlton; in 2007 official flood records identified local watercourse and highway flooding. Later investigations documented continuing problems with drainage and agricultural runoff.
Great North Road Solar and Biodiversity Park: the government has granted consent, but the examination record reveals serious questions about water, land and the promises that must now be delivered.
28 October 2026 | Great North Road Solar and Biodiversity Park, EN010162
On 27 October 2026 the government approved the Great North Road Solar and Biodiversity Park, a scheme promoted by Elements Green Trent Limited northwest of Newark-on-Trent. The project is authorised for up to 800 MW of solar generation alongside battery storage, substations and grid connections. The Examining Authority had recommended granting consent, and ministers accepted that recommendation, with modifications to the Development Consent Order.
For the developer, this is a major planning success. For people living in the Trent valley — particularly around Carlton-on-Trent, Sutton-on-Trent and neighbouring villages — there is a much more immediate question. What happens when the rain comes down, the ditches cannot cope and the water starts moving towards people’s homes?
This is not a theoretical concern invented after the decision. Flooding ran through the examination evidence. Residents recorded previous inundation. Technical advisers challenged the completeness of the modelling. The Environment Agency raised questions about flood risks around important electrical infrastructure. The developer gave responses and proposed mitigation, and the county council ultimately recorded agreement on hydrology. All of that matters. Approval does not mean flooding was never an issue. Nor does the existence of objections prove the approved scheme will cause flooding. The public deserves to know exactly where the line was drawn.
A landscape that has already shown what it can do
The Trent floodplain has a history measured not merely in computer probabilities but in flooded footpaths, roads, fields and homes. In October 2023 Storm Babet brought serious surface-water flooding to villages in this part of Nottinghamshire. In January 2024 Storm Henk brought further disruption. At its meeting on 9 January 2024, Sutton-on-Trent Parish Council discussed failed pumps, drainage ditches, damage to flood defences and the differing impacts of river flooding and rainfall-driven flooding. These are recorded concerns from the community, not campaign speculation.
Across Nottinghamshire, the county council subsequently reported that Storm Henk flooded 344 homes and 40 businesses internally and closed 69 roads. Those are countywide totals, not a tally for villages next to this proposed development. But they demonstrate what a major flood event can mean in a county already struggling with saturated ground and overflowing waterways.
An especially detailed representation from a Carlton-on-Trent resident described fields to the west draining towards Carlton and Sutton through dykes and culverts. The resident said Storm Babet flooded properties and displaced households, with Storm Henk adding to the damage. The submission identified a drainage route near Ossington Road and questioned whether existing pipes and channels had been adequately represented. These are firsthand claims submitted to the examination; the precise account of each affected property is not independently verified here. Their significance lies in the detailed, local flow paths and recent history they put before the decision-makers.
Ten per cent of the site is not in the lowest river-flood zone
The developer’s planning material stated that 89.99 per cent of the Order Limits were in Flood Zone 1, leaving 10.01 per cent within Flood Zones 2 or 3. Those figures refer to the broad development boundary — approximately 1,765 hectares — not to an assertion that every hectare will carry solar panels. The boundary includes land for cables, mitigation and other works.
The applicant’s later evidence said that only a small part of Work Area 1, towards Carlton-on-Trent, fell within Flood Zone 2. The balance of the proposed solar-array work areas was in Flood Zone 1. Higher-risk Flood Zone 3 land principally related to underground connections and environmental mitigation areas, rather than the main battery plant and substations. That distinction must be made fairly.
But there is another distinction just as important: Flood Zone 1 is not a guarantee against surface-water flooding. The government’s flood-zone categories primarily describe the annual probability of river and sea flooding; rainwater running off fields, gathering in hollows and overwhelming culverts can behave differently. A village can be flooded by water from the land even when the Trent itself remains behind its defences.
The developer said its assessment had accounted for these mechanisms and that operational equipment would be sited or raised to manage predicted flood depths. The issue for residents is not simply whether the solar equipment survives. It is whether altered ground conditions, access tracks, construction works or drainage arrangements change the route or timing of water reaching their homes.
The technical review asked for a bigger picture
One of the most revealing documents is the March 2026 Statement of Common Ground between the developer and Nottinghamshire County Council. Its appendix reproduces technical scrutiny of the Flood Risk Assessment. The review described low-permeability soils and existing drainage concerns. It pointed out that the assessment used Environment Agency surface-water mapping and targeted two-dimensional modelling but did not include a full, site-wide direct-rainfall model across the solar fields. It also questioned the absence of sensitivity tests for longer storms — for example, six- and twelve-hour events.
Why does that matter? Because water does not respect a developer’s work-area boundaries. An alteration in one field can affect a ditch, an outfall or a lower field somewhere else. A drainage assessment that looks closely at particular locations may be useful, but it is reasonable to ask whether the entire linked catchment has been tested as a system.
The technical review recommended a site-wide hydraulic model, better-scaled flood maps and a fuller account of existing drainage infrastructure. It also queried why a river-defence breach scenario had not been separately assessed for fluvial flooding. Further questions covered floodplain storage, hardstanding, watercourse crossings and the risk that construction could change overland flow before new grass cover became established.
These were technical questions recorded during the application and examination process, not a finding that the development would definitely flood nearby properties. The applicant responded that targeted modelling had examined areas where the scheme could interact with flooding; that published flood maps were a suitable indicator for certain breach scenarios; and that drainage controls and later detailed design requirements would manage residual risks. Nottinghamshire County Council’s hydrology table ultimately recorded its relevant matters as agreed, while noting that further drainage detail would follow consent.
That sequence is fundamental. The criticisms were made, the developer replied, and the authority recorded agreement. The remaining public question is whether the conditions attached to approval will make those replies enforceable and demonstrably effective on the ground.
What about the batteries and substations?
The Environment Agency’s earlier comments were not limited to flooded farmland. Its consultation response raised the possibility that flood risk around the battery energy storage system and substation areas had been underestimated, and that the placement of infrastructure could affect flood risk elsewhere.
The applicant then undertook updated hydraulic modelling, including a culvert beneath the A617. Its response stated that the relevant battery/substation work areas, 5a and 5b, were outside the modelled flood extent for the assessed event with a climate-change allowance. That is material evidence in the developer’s favour, and it would be misleading to leave it out.
But the issue does not end with whether valuable electrical equipment is kept dry. Electrical sites bring foundations, internal roads, compounds, security infrastructure, land drainage and construction traffic. How those components are positioned and drained is part of the broader flood-risk question. Any final drainage scheme should show the full physical design, not merely repeat the reassuring conclusions reached when the layout was still indicative.
The scientific question residents raised about solar panels and runoff
The Carlton resident’s submission challenged an assumption sometimes heard in these applications: that panels themselves need not increase surface-water runoff because water still falls onto vegetated ground. The representation pointed to the local clay soils, slopes and panel orientation, and referred to a peer-reviewed 2023 paper in Hydrological Processes examining how solar panels redistribute rainfall and affect runoff.
The study is relevant because it demonstrates that panel layout, rainfall concentration and ground cover can matter. But it must not be misused. Its striking experimental runoff results came from a particular rainfall-simulator study using bare soil as the comparison, not a realistic prediction that runoff in Carlton would rise by the same multiple. The authors recommended maintaining grass cover and erosion-control measures. This research supports a demand for site-specific assessment; it does not establish that this approved scheme will flood a particular house.
That is the central test. Have the slopes, soil conditions, panel arrangements and drainage routes in the Carlton fields been assessed in enough detail to rule out unacceptable downstream effects, including during construction? And when a detailed design differs from the illustrative plans, who will check that the original flood conclusions still hold?
Flood-alleviation promises must not be confused with binding protection
The developer has discussed natural flood management and a community benefit initiative known as NG+. The concept of slowing, storing or diverting water upstream may sound attractive to residents who have spent years dealing with drainage failures. But an important distinction emerged in the examination: some proposed community flood-alleviation initiatives were described as being delivered separately from the Development Consent Order, potentially through separate planning processes.
A separate, voluntary benefit programme is not the same thing as a legally secured mitigation measure required to make a development acceptable. If a drainage intervention is essential to prevent the solar park increasing flood risk, the public needs to know where the binding requirement sits, who pays for it, when it must be finished and who maintains it for the project’s life. If it is merely an additional community benefit, it should not be presented as though it is guaranteed protection.
There is a simple standard here: no critical protection should depend on an aspiration, a future fund application or a promise that someone will sort out the details later. The final made Order, its drainage requirement and the approved management plans need to be examined line by line.
The wider price of development
Flooding is only one of the concerns considered. The government’s reported planning balance acknowledged significant landscape and visual harm and adverse agricultural-land effects, while accepting that the energy benefits and mitigation justified consent. The decision material reports around 26.9 hectares of permanent loss of best and most versatile agricultural capability. This is not a claim that the whole 1,765-hectare application boundary is permanently stripped of productive soil; nor should promised habitat improvements be mistaken for benefits already achieved.
The project is promoted as a major contribution to renewable electricity supply, and that potential benefit was central to the decision. Yet there is an equally legitimate public interest in protecting food-producing land, flood storage, drainage and the character of rural communities. Development on this scale should be judged against what it physically delivers and what it physically changes, not simply against its name or its rated generating capacity.
Approval is the start of an accountability test, not the end
The Secretary of State has made the planning decision. That is now a fact. The Examining Authority recommended consent, the government granted it on 27 October 2026, and the developer has made a detailed case that the scheme can be delivered safely. Nothing in the record reviewed here proves that construction will cause more flooding.
What the record does prove is that the people of this valley raised highly specific concerns — and that technical reviewers considered some aspects of the original flood case insufficiently clear. The project was not approved because the landscape had no flood risks. It was approved after the decision-makers accepted the assessments, changes, responses and controls as sufficient.
The next test is therefore concrete. The full final drainage design, flood maps, construction-phase controls, culvert protection measures and arrangements for monitoring downstream effects should be easily accessible to residents before relevant work starts. The developer and discharging authorities should make clear what happens if the design changes, if a drainage feature fails or if monitoring shows flows behaving differently from the model. Communities deserve a clear contact and remedy process, not a reference number buried in a planning portal.
Most importantly, the outcome should be judged at the village boundary, not just at the battery fence. A solar farm can be technically protected from floodwater while leaving residents concerned about water travelling off surrounding fields. The engineering needs to address both.
The Trent has flooded before, and it will flood again. These photographs document that history, while the examination records document the questions raised about this particular development. The burden is now on those building and regulating this project to demonstrate that approval has not simply moved the risk from an infrastructure drawing to somebody else’s front door.
Evidence and image sources
- Planning Inspectorate announcement, 27 October 2026 — approval, promoter, capacity, examination timetable.
- Project official register, EN010162 — final decision, Examining Authority recommendation and examination library.
- Nottinghamshire County Council / applicant Statement of Common Ground, March 2026 (8.1C) — hydrology agreement and reproduced independent technical flood review, particularly appended pages 88–93.
- Developer planning statement, December 2025–January 2026 — flood-zone percentages and planned work areas.
- Carlton-on-Trent resident’s written flood-risk representation — historic flooding and site-specific drainage/solar layout objections (resident evidence, not independently established findings).
- Sutton-on-Trent Parish Council minutes, 9 January 2024 — flooding, pumps, drainage and flood-defence discussion.
- Nottinghamshire County Council’s Storm Henk investigation announcement — countywide flood impacts.
- Baiamonte and colleagues, Impact of solar panels on runoff generation process, 2023 — experimental hydrology; not a direct prediction for the project site.
- Applicant’s responses to Deadline 4 submissions — response to Carlton Parish Council about solar runoff and local layout changes.
- JPAG response to Examining Authority questions — distinction between NG+ community benefits and DCO commitments.
Leave a Reply