SOLAR panels are to be installed on the roof of St Mary Magdalene’s, Woodstock, a Grade II* listed church, after a faculty was granted by the Consistory Court of the diocese of Oxford.
The church is situated in a conservation area north-west of the city of Oxford, and borders a park with World Heritage Site status. The petition for the faculty 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 at the church, and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and the Victorian Society deferred to the advice of the DAC and Historic England.
The parish sought to weigh the potential harm from the solar panels against their perceived benefits. As to harm, the panels on the nave roof would be slightly visible from part-way down the southern churchyard, but that was not the main viewpoint for the church. The panels on the aisle would probably not be seen. Some vertical cables might be seen, although most would be adjacent to existing cable runs for the lightning conductors and power supply.
As to the benefits, the parish said that there would be a saving of 3.79 tons of carbon dioxide annually: the equivalent of 174 trees. That would generate 19.61 MWh a year and reduce the church’s dependency on fossil fuels. It would also reduce the church’s electricity consumption by 5.38 MWh a year, which was 53 per cent of its annual energy consumption.
That was equivalent to more than £4000 a year, dropping to £3125 in late 2026, when the existing fixed-price contract could be changed (assuming electricity prices remained static), making the church more sustainable financially. The parish had been struggling to pay its parish share. Excess energy would be sold back to the grid.
Solar panels were one of the few options open to this church to help both the Church of England attain its target of Net Zero and the local community to reduce carbon emissions.
As Christians, the parish felt the need to lead by example to show their care for God’s environment. Net Zero was an important 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 sole, or even a principal reason for the church’s significance”.
Even if there were any harm caused to the significance of this church by the presence of the solar panels, the Chancellor said, the petitioner had demonstrated “a clear and convincing justification for such limited consequential harm in terms of 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 clear, 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 might be taken into account when weighing the justification for installing them, in addition to the need to address the climate emergency. That would “always be a highly fact-sensitive additional factor”.
The Chancellor emphasised, however, that, “bearing in mind 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 extra source of revenue may be considered as a relevant additional justification for the installation of solar panels. But this factor must never constitute the sole justification for such an installation.” The parish would always need to show evidence of a “commitment to reducing energy consumption and improving energy efficiency”.
The Chancellor decided that there was “a clear case for the grant of the faculty sought”, since “happily, a number of factors [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 must be completed within four months of the granting of the faculty.
