Question: What do Dauntsey Lock, Royal Arthur and solar farms across Wiltshire all have in common? Answer: They are all highly controversial areas of development which combine causing outrage and inconvenience to many members of the public with having potential benefit for us all.

Network Rail has been working hard this week to sort out the problems associated with the electrification of the Great Western Rail line from Paddington to Swansea. We will all benefit from the faster and longer trains, and the environmental improvements but there are 200 bridges to be raised to accommodate the wiring, each of which will entail months’ closure of many key roads, with the attendant diversions, and losses to businesses. I called them in to Parliament last week, and gave them a bit of a kicking over the first problem in this area, at Dauntsey Lock.

As a result, they came at very senior level to Royal Wootton Bassett Town Council the following evening, and are committed to doing all they can to keep local people informed and involved, and to try to minimise disruption.

I shall keep a sharp eye on them over the next couple of years.

Royal Arthur is a disused, ex-RN base hidden away in the woods behind Rudloe. I was glad to turn the first sod of a multi-million pound development of what they describe as a senior persons’ village.

What a brilliant way to recycle a derelict site. I was especially keen to support it in contrast to the very many greenfield applications we are seeing at the moment. We must preserve our countryside yet allow sensitive and sustainable development. Royal Arthur does just that.

Applications for (and development of) solar farms seem to be popping up all over the place too.

I had been taking a bit of a laissez faire approach but there are now so many of them that I am becoming concerned about their cumulative effect. A driver across Wiltshire might easily pass 50 such sites, giving the real impression of urbanisation and industrialisation of our green and pleasant county.

Agriculture and landscape arguments seem to me to trump green energy ones, and I shall therefore be taking steps to oppose these applications before Wiltshire becomes like a giant mirror.

Industrial, energy and housing development must always be a delicate equation. Rail electrification and brownfield development are all on the virtuous side of that equation, but I am becoming more and more of the view that solar farms are not.