SOLAR panels are to be installed on the roof of St Mary Magdalene’s, Woodstock, a Grade II* listed church, after a school was granted by the Consistory Court of the diocese of Oxford.
The church is situated in a conservation area north-west of town of Oxford, and borders a park with World Heritage Site status. The petition for the school was presented by the church treasurer, Aiden Salter, with the authority of the PCC, at a time when the incumbency was vacant. The diocesan advisory committee (DAC) supported the proposal for solar panels. According to the petition, which was unopposed, the estimated cost of the works was £30,000.
The local planning authority had given full planning permission for the installation of the solar panels on the roofs of the south nave and south aisle. The Church Buildings Council was supportive of the petition, Historic England had no objections in principle to solar panels on the church, and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and the Victorian Society deferred to the recommendation of the DAC and Historic England.
The parish sought to weigh the potential harm from the solar panels against their perceived advantages. As to harm, the panels on the nave roof could be barely visible from part-way down the southern churchyard, but that was not the major viewpoint for the church. The panels on the aisle would probably not be seen. Some vertical cables may be seen, although most could be adjoining to existing cable runs for the lightning conductors and power supply.
As to the advantages, the parish said that there could be a saving of three.79 tons of carbon dioxide annually: the equivalent of 174 trees. That would generate 19.61 MWh a 12 months and reduce the church’s dependency on fossil fuels. It would also reduce the church’s electricity consumption by 5.38 MWh a 12 months, which was 53 per cent of its annual energy consumption.
That was akin to greater than £4000 a 12 months, dropping to £3125 in late 2026, when the prevailing fixed-price contract may very well be modified (assuming electricity prices remained static), making the church more sustainable financially. The parish had been struggling to pay its parish share. Excess energy could be sold back to the grid.
Solar panels were one among the few options open to this church to assist each the Church of England attain its goal of Net Zero and the local people to cut back carbon emissions.
As Christians, the parish felt the necessity to lead by example to indicate their take care of God’s environment. Net Zero was a very important a part of that, the parish felt, and the production of electricity from a renewable source helped to combat climate change.
The Diocesan Chancellor, the Worshipful Judge David Hodge KC, said that the installation of solar panels on the nave and south aisle would cause “only negligible, if any harm to the church’s significance”. The church roof was “not the only real, or perhaps a principal reason for the church’s significance”.
Even if there have been any harm caused to the importance of this church by the presence of the solar panels, the Chancellor said, the petitioner had demonstrated “a transparent and convincing justification for such limited consequential harm when it comes to the resulting savings in energy costs, and the contribution that the solar panels will make to the church’s goal of reducing carbon emissions and achieving ‘net zero’”.
The installation of the panels would also, the Chancellor said, “constitute a transparent, but barely visible, sign to residents of, and visitors to, Woodstock and the neighbouring Blenheim Palace and its surrounding Park, of the commitment of the parish church and of this diocese to meeting the challenges of the climate change emergency”.
The Chancellor was also in agreement with the DAC that the potential income to be derived from the sale of surplus electricity generated by the solar panels may be taken into consideration when weighing the justification for installing them, along with the necessity to deal with the climate emergency. That would “at all times be a highly fact-sensitive additional factor”.
The Chancellor emphasised, nevertheless, that, “taking into account the considerable financial pressures on churches to sustain themselves, particularly in light of the changes wrought by the Covid pandemic, the potential for the sale of surplus electricity as an additional income could also be regarded as a relevant additional justification for the installation of solar panels. But this factor must not ever constitute the only real justification for such an installation.” The parish would at all times need to indicate evidence of a “commitment to reducing energy consumption and improving energy efficiency”.
The Chancellor decided that there was “a transparent case for the grant of the school sought”, since “happily, quite a lot of aspects [had] all combined to support the installation of the solar panels on . . . the roof of a Grade II* listed church of local, diocesan, and national significance.”
The Chancellor ruled that the installation of the solar panels have to be accomplished inside 4 months of the granting of the school.
