On Friday The Supreme Court threw out the Government's attempt to appeal on the ruling that its actions on solar Feed-in Tariffs (FiTs) were illegal.
This provides a unanimous decision from the High Court, Court of Appeal and Supreme Court that the Government should not have prematurely cut solar Feed-in Tariffs before the end of a consultation period, placing thousands of green jobs at risk; and clarifies the Government can not change the Feed-in Tariff retrospectively.
This means any solar installation completed before March 3rd this year, qualifies for the higher Feed-in Tariff rate. The law, as stated by the Court of Appeal, is that the 12th December could not be used as the Feed-in Tariff cut off date, a Feed-in Tariff date change can only be set by regulations laid before Parliament and can only take effect after the period of 40 days specified.
The original legal challenge was made by Solarcentury, Friends of the Earth and HomeSun, and the High Court ruled on 21 December that a Government proposal to cut payments for any solar scheme completed after 12 December 2011 - 11 days before an official consultation into the proposal had even closed - was unlawful.
Jeremy Leggett, Chairman, Solarcentury said on friday:
''The Supreme Court has today confirmed that the Government simply has no grounds to appeal the decision that its handling of solar Feed-in Tariffs was illegal. This final step in the legal process has wasted much needed time and money and now we, the renewables industry, simply want to get on with creating our clean energy future...'
Thursday, 29 March 2012
Tuesday, 6 March 2012
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