A special planning committee meeting is to be held to consider East Cambridgeshire District Council’s (ECDC) official response to Sunnica.

It will take place on Thursday, November 3 at The Mandeville Hall, Burwell, from 10:30am.

Residents, parish councils, interested parties, action groups, and the developer will be able to attend the meeting.

Sunnica Ltd is proposing to build a nationally significant energy farm generating in excess of 50MW of renewable electricity.

If approved, it will stretch across four locations, including the East Cambridgeshire villages of Isleham, Chippenham, Kennett and Snailwell; and Freckenham and Worlington in Suffolk.

Each site will feature multiple fields of solar photovoltaic panels and battery energy storage infrastructure, which will connect to each other and the Burwell National Grid substation by an underground cable.

Earlier this year, ECDC submitted its relevant representation response to Sunnica.

Since then, it has continued to work in partnership with Cambridgeshire County Council, West Suffolk Council and Suffolk County Council to produce a joint local impact report.

The report expands on the issues raised in the relevant representations which will be submitted no later than Wednesday, October 19.

A spokesperson for ECDC said: “Because the Sunnica energy site is a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP), the decision on whether or not to grant planning permission rests with the secretary of state for the department for business, energy and industrial strategy (BEIS) and not ECDC.

“Instead, the council is a statutory consultee and will make representations on the application to the planning inspectorate which administers the application process on behalf of the secretary of state.”

ECDC’s response will be made in a written representation to be submitted no later than Friday, November 11.

Following the submission of the written representation, all the evidence will be examined by the planning inspectorate in a process with is likely to take around six months.

The secretary of state then had a further three months to make a decision on whether to grant or refuse development consent.

Those who wish to speak at the meeting will need to register by contacting democratic.services@eastcambs.gov.uk before 10am on Wednesday, November 2.