Dear Liam Porter

Thank you for your Freedom of Information/Environmental Information Regulations request, which was received by Vale of White Horse District Council on 3 January 2024

Please accept this email as confirmation that your request has been received and is being considered by the relevant department and that a response will be sent to you within 20 working days, subject to the information not being exempt and subject to any need for clarification.

The deadline for this will be 31 January 2024

The reference number for this request is Vale 23/876

I trust that this email is sufficient to assure you that your request is being dealt with. However, should you have any queries in the meantime, please do not hesitate to contact the FOI team at [Vale of White Horse District Council request email]

Kind regards

Information Governance Team

Legal & Democratic Services
Vale of White Horse District Council
www.whitehorsedc.gov.uk

We've moved - our address is now:

Abbey House
Abbey Close
Abingdon
OX14 3JE
Please update your records.

To find out more about how the council holds, uses and stores your personal data, please click on the link below
Vale of White Horse District Council

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Dear Liam Porter

Thank you for your requests for information under the Environmental
Information Regulations (2004), which were received by both South
Oxfordshire District Council (logged under 23/1035 SOUTH) and Vale of
White Horse District Council (logged under 23/876 VALE).  Please note that
the two councils operate as a shared service hence this joint response.

Under Part 2 Regulation 5 of the Environmental Information Regulations
2004, you are entitled to information which is in the authority’s
possession or is held by another person on behalf of the authority unless
any exceptions apply (Part 3 Regulation 12). I have considered your
request and can confirm we do hold some of the information asked and I do
not believe any of the statutory exemptions apply to your request. Please
find below the information you requested (where available):

Under the Freedom of Information Act, I would like to request the
following information;

Has your council declared a climate emergency?

Both South Oxfordshire District Council and Vale of White Horse District
Council have declared a climate emergency.

Please provide a breakdown of how many projects in the following
categories your council has objected to, rejected and approved over the
last three years; battery storage, wind and solar.

What is the average time taken to make a decision on each of the following
types of projects; battery storage, solar and wind.

Please provide a list of approved and not approved wind, solar and battery
projects indicating MW/size for each project.

The information you request is contained within planning applications and
whilst we record time periods to determine applications, we do not hold
this in a way that allows us to isolate those for applications which
include reference to battery storage, solar or wind.

Due to the way we categorise planning applications on our system we do not
have a search/filter facility that would enable us to identify
applications for battery storage, wind or solar specifically (we do not
categorise them in this way).

However, we have been able to run a ‘key word’ search on the ‘description’
field within our database, which will have pulled some of the data you
have requested from our system. We have attached a spreadsheet showing the
results of our search, however, as we carried out a ‘key word’ search we
cannot guarantee that this is a comprehensive list of all relevant
applications within the scope of your request.

You can filter the attached spreadsheet to view the data for each of the 3
years separately via the decision date column or to filter by individual
council.

If you wish to view further details about any of the applications listed,
you can add the application reference number to the search facility on our
website linked below and then click on the ‘planning applications’ tab on
the search results page to view the entry in our planning register.

[1]https://www.southoxon.gov.uk/

[2]https://www.whitehorsedc.gov.uk/

Please treat this as the councils’ formal response to your Environmental
Information Regulation request.  If you are not satisfied with the
response we have provided to your request, under Environmental Information
Regulation 11, you may make a request for an internal review within 40
working days of receiving this response by emailing
[3][email address] and [4][Vale of White Horse District Council request email].  If you remain
dissatisfied after following that procedure, you have the right to
complain to the Information Commissioner. You can contact the Commissioner
at Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF (telephone
number: 0303 123 1113). You can also find further information at
[5]www.ico.org.uk.

Kind regards

Information Governance Team

Legal & Democratic Services

South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse District Councils

01235 422400

[6]www.southoxon.gov.uk

[7]www.whitehorsedc.gov.uk

Abbey House
Abbey Close
Abingdon
OX14 3JE

To find out more about how the councils hold, use and store your personal
data, please click on the appropriate link:

[8]South Oxfordshire District Council  [9]Vale of White Horse District
Council

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