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A DECISION on the £11m installation of thousands of solar panels at Lakeside business park has been delayed because Portsmouth City Council failed to publish the required notice for its planning application.

Members of its planning committee are due to consider the proposal on Wednesday but have been told a formal decision cannot now be issued until the notice expires at the end of the month.

'It has transpired that the necessary press notice for this major category application was not published,' a committee report says. 'That has now been arranged and the notice is expected to expire on October 28. The application should not be determined until the following working day (October 31).'

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What the car park at Lakeside Northarbour will look like after the solar panels are installed

However, councillors will be asked to grant provisional planning permission for the 5,900kwp project which will see almost 2,000 panels installed on the roof of the office building and a further 11,000 on car park canopies.

The council said this would save the equivalent of 1,000 tonnes of carbon emissions a year by replacing more polluting methods of producing electricity. The council’s aim is to be carbon-neutral by 2030.

Under the submitted plans, the layout of the car park will be changed so that there is no reduction in the number of spaces, despite the installation of the canopies.

Planning officers said the scheme would deliver 'significant' benefits and that there had been no public objections or concerns raised by council officers, subject to the canopies being set back from access roads to prevent lorries hitting them.

'The development proposal would be of an appropriate design and scale that would satisfactorily integrate with the character and appearance of the site and wider street scene context, while providing significant environmental benefits in the form of sustainably-generated electricity,' the report adds.

The project will be funded through the £30m borrowed for the new low carbon projects fund set up by the council earlier this year.

‘Having our offices powering our investments is great in terms of reducing the energy bill at Lakeside but it’s also great in terms of reducing the carbon dioxide,' council leader Gerald Vernon-Jackson said earlier this year.

Delay in Portsmouth City Council's Lakeside solar panels project after public notice is not published