News Article
Westmill Solar Co-op Achieves Full Subscription
While community owned and based solar farms are well known in a number of countries in mainland Europe, it is a novel concept to the UK market. One of the first such programmes in the UK , Westmill Solar Co-operative has announced that the most recent subscriptions for shares for the next stage of the PV project has already sold out allowing the community based company to move to the next stage of development
Westmill Solar Co-operative was established in March 2011 with the intention of enabling community ownership of a 5MW solar park on the Oxfordshire/Wiltshire border, next to the existing community owned 6.5MW wind farm. Ed Vaizey MP officially launched the share offer for £4 million on 23rd June and by the 31st July, at the close of the offer period, the group had received over 1,600 applications, the majority from people local to the site, with the offer being fully subscribed. Westmill solar farm will be the first community owned solar farm in the UK and is believed to be the largest community owned solar farm in the world.
The subscription process has gone much better than anticipated and organisers have stated there is a comfortable margin of safety with the number of applications. They intend to provide more accurate details once all the data has been collected and tallied up.
Philip Wolfe, Chairman, Westmill Solar Cooperative thanked all those involved, especially the local community that has supported the venture with such enthusiasm. The share details should be finalised by the end of August and planning will then begin on the solar farm