A SOLAR farm with 40,000 panels will be a blight on the landscape, it is claimed.

Maldon District Council is considering an application by Little Horkesley-based Lightsource Renewable Energy for a 23-hectare solar farm on fields south of Beckingham Road, Great Totham.

Helen White, 44, of Plains Road, Little Totham, said covering fields with solar panels would be completely out of keeping with the area and is determined to fight the proposals.

She said: “The visual impact of this is huge.

“There is a huge public objection, I would say about 99.9 per cent of the village is against it.”

A decision on the solar farm, which would generate enough electricity to power 3,073 homes, will be made at a planning and licensing committee meeting on Thursday.

Robert Long, district councillor for Tolleshunt D’Arcy, is among the councillors who have objected to the plans.

He said: “I feel that in this modern age the wind farms, the wind mills and the solar panel farms have become the modern version of satanic mills on our green and pleasant land.”

Fergus Howie, of Wicks Manor Farm in Tolleshunt Major.

He said he is disappointed with the councillors’ views.

“There’s no way we can create power by building nucleur power stations and burning fossil fuels,” he said.

“We have as good as ruined the world and created global warming. Why can’t people wake up to the fact that the sun is there and can create clean energy?”

Mr Howie plans to plant clover and allow sheep to graze around the panels.

He said on a sunny day, 204 solar panels at Wicks Manor Farm produce one-third of the electricity the farm used in a day.