Land-take by ground-mounted solar installations
• This is a January 2026 update of a document originally produced in April 2024.
• An analysis is presented of the UK ground-mounted solar photovoltaic situation, based on the October 2025 version of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero’s Renewable Energy Planning Database (REPD), supplemented with information about NSIP-scale solar proposals collected by the citizen science group, SolarQ UK.
• The total (nameplate) capacity of all viable installations in the REPD of <= 50MW is 41,185MW (41.2GW), of which 9,511MW (9.51GW) are currently operational.
• The total capacity of all NSIP-scale installations of >50MW is 24,661MW (24.7GW), very few of which are currently operational.
• Lincolnshire has the greatest total solar PV capacity (6,943MW), followed by Norfolk (3,763 MW) and Nottinghamshire (3,376MW). Lincolnshire therefore also has the largest share, 10.6%, of the UK’s total figure.
• The sub-NSIP and NSIP-scale ground-mounted solar installations analysed here have a total capacity of 65,846MW (Table 2). Together with an estimated 5GW of rooftop solar, the grand total rises to over 70GW, approaching the current 2035 target of up to 75GW set by the Clean Power 2030 Report (CP2030).
• The total area occupied by ground-mounted solar PV in each County/Unitary Authority varies from zero to 4.6% for Thurrock. For administrative units larger than 200sq. kms, the maximum coverage is 4.4% for Doncaster; for those above 1,000sq. kms, the maximum is 4.0% for Nottinghamshire.
• A similar analysis was carried out by Parliamentary constituencies, the areas of which tend to be smaller than administrative areas; hence the percentage occupied by ground-mounted solar is more variable. Newark has the highest coverage (8.74%) followed by Folkestone and Hythe (8.73%) and Sleaford and North Hykeham (6.89%). 322 of the 650 Parliamentary constituencies have ground-mounted solar coverage of at least 0.1%, 173 have coverage of at least 0.6%, and 114 of at least 1.0%.
• The analysis shows that the frequently quoted figure of solar PV occupying only 0.1% of the UK’s land area is wrong. Currently the correct, UK-wide figure is nearer 0.51% (assuming all viable sub-NSIP proposals in the REPD and all NSIP-scale solar proposals are carried to completion). The figure for England rises to 0.87%, well over eight times the quoted figure.
• Solar proposals often target agricultural land, which is 69% of the total land area of England. The total area occupied by (or already proposed for) solar in England amounts to 0.96% of its agricultural land (ALC Grades 1 to 5). With a developing world food crisis, we can ill afford to lose more productive agricultural land to solar PV.
• We clearly require a land-use strategy that takes into account the many conflicting demands placed upon the scarce resource of available land, for agriculture, conservation, health and leisure activities, housing and renewable energy production.
Ground-mounted solar installations. The UK’s most affected constituencies, January 2026
The Renewable Energy Planning Database (REPD) does not include all of the large area, ground-mounted solar installations that have been or will be submitted under the NSIP regime. SolarQ has digitised the redline boundaries for the 80 NSIP proposals for which maps were available by December 2025 and added these to the October 2025 REPD information for ‘sub-NSIP’ installations (i.e. <50MW), so that we can now rank the Parliamentary constituencies in terms of the total percentage of the area of each that is or will be affected by ground-mounted solar installations.
For the present iteration, information in the REPD on the area occupied by sub-NSIP installations (now given in the REPD) was used in a regression to calculate the average land-take per MWp installed capacity of these sub-NSIP schemes (the regression, with a slope of 1.736 hectares/MWp, is shown in the full Report). Areas of the NSIP installations were calculated directly from their digitised, redline boundaries.
The maps below show the 20 most affected constituencies and the footnote for each, in red at the bottom, shows the rank, name and percentage of the total area that is, or will be, affected (these figures are also shown in green on the map itself). Within each map, the icons for the different developmental stages of the REPD installations (see the map Legend) are scaled according to the MWp capacity of each (the largest icons usually represent installed capacities of 50MWp).
The pale background colours of the maps reflect those of the parties of the sitting MPs (Labour red, Conservative blue, Liberal Democrats yellow and Reform purple) whose names, constituency names, party, percentage cover by solar installations (in green) and percentage of all UK ground-mounted solar within that constituency (bracketed figures in red) are in the callouts within/near each constituency. The key constituency on each map is outlined in purple; other constituency boundaries are in grey (their MPs, names and percentage solar cover are also in callouts within/near each one).
Use the left/right arrows to see the maps.
(The maps below update information in the Report on this web-page, which is based on an earlier edition of the REPD and less complete information on the NSIP installations. The Report itself will be updated soon.)
1 Newark, 8.74%
2 Folkestone and Hythe, 8.73%
3 Sleaford and North Hykeham, 6.89%
4 Rother Valley, 6.84%
5 South Norfolk, 5.82%
6 Thurrock, 5.27%
7 Gainsborough, 5.16%
8 Newport East, 5.10%
9 Bristol Central, 5.08%
10 Selby, 4.84%
11 Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme, 4.50%
12 Rawmarsh and Conisborough, 4.43%
13 Bicester and Woodstock, 4.05%
14 South Cambridgeshire, 3.94%
15 Stockton West, 3.88%
16 Basildon and Billericay, 3.83%
17 Goole and Pocklington, 3.81%
18 Christchurch, 3.51%
19 Easington, 3.44%
20 Grantham and Bourne, 3.27%