St Jude's Church in Southsea has planning application for dozens of solar panels on its roof submitted

The managing committee of St Jude’s Church in Kent Road have applied for planning permission to put 36 panels on the southern roof of the building in a bid to reduce its environmental impact while also reducing energy bills.

‘St Jude’s Church is a significant part of the local landscape for both the secular and faith communities of our city,’ a statement submitted with its application says. ‘The building is a beautiful and much-loved historical church which has seen innovation and improvement over the many stages of its development. The addition of PV solar panels will be entirely consistent with this successive evolution of this important place of local public worship.’

Estimates show the panels would meet about half the electricity consumption of the church, which was built in 1851, each year – saving more than £3,000 over the same period.

Church leaders said the choice of the south aisle roof would lessen the visual impact of the installation, protecting the historic appearance of the church by not including the nave roof.

Despite this, concerns have been raised by heritage groups. Historic England raised concerns over the detail of the scheme during discussions held last year before the application was submitted. And the Victorian Society, warned the solar panels would still be visible from certain angles and that this ‘would certainly erode that facet of the building’s significance to some extent’.

‘The harm they would cause would be compounded by the specific nature of the installation: an in-roof system necessitating the stripping (or partial stripping) of the slate roof,’ it said in a consultation response. ‘We note the desire to reduce visibility to a minimum, which partly explains the choice of an in-roof system. However, while this would result in the array being marginally less visible, it would constitute a much more physically invasive scheme.’

In response to this, the church changed its proposals to that requested by the society ahead of the submission of the planning application at the beginning of the month.