A council backed solar-farm will be built on a former landfill site in Oswestry after planners gave the scheme the green light.

Over 3,000 solar panels will be installed on a four hectare(9.8 acre) site on Maesbury Road Industrial Estate, providing electricity for a nearby food packaging plant via a direct connection to the building, with excess power sold back to the national grid.

The decision by the council’s planning committee on Tuesday(September 17) means a three-year process to get the solar project up and running looks finally set to come to fruition.

When complete, dairy co-operative Arla Foods will purchase electricity generated by the panels under a so-called Power Purchase Agreement over the site’s 25-year life-span.

Proposals for the “problematic” former landfill site were first mooted in 2021, with the council saying at the time that further solar generation schemes could follow on similar sites in the county.

Potential uses for the site are limited due to its former use, described as a grassed over “waste mountain” with a four-hectare flat top upon which the panels will be placed.

There is no base liner on the site, but a clay “cap” of between one and two metres in depth prevents rain-water from filtering down into waste materials in the ground.

In a report to the committee, the council’s Environmental Protection team said it was “imperitive” that the weight of the panels did not lead to a breach in the cap, and recommended that a scheme of pollution monitoring be adopted as a condition of the development.

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“The Preliminary Risk Assessment by [planning consultants] Reports 4 Planning assumes that regular monitoring of ground gases, leachate levels and water quality are undertaken, ” they said.

“This is not the case, and the last time environmental monitoring of the Maesbury Road former landfill site was undertaken, was in 2018.

“It is imperative that the integrity of the cap is maintained and regardless of

whatever mounting system is adopted, there remain concerns regarding the load(weight) placed on an above ground landfill site, and the potential impact that this might have on leachate breakout around the perimeter of the site or indeed, within the site boundary.”

Speaking in 2021 after cabinet gave the plans the nod, Councillor Dean Carroll said the scheme could provide a “template” for future sites should it prove successful.

“We are taking what was historically a problem location and we are seeing the opportunity in it which is large scale renewable power generation,” he said at the time, adding: “That is then a template for us to do it on five, 10 or maybe more sites, because I firmly believe that this will be an extremely successful project.”

Construction work at the site is expected to last around five months.