a house with solar panels — Photo by Watt A Lot on Unsplash

A leading rural charity has criticised the government this week for not announcing further subsidies for residential and commercial solar in the budget.

The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), the countryside charity, told The Economist that they would have liked to have seen “a lot more” from the government in commitments to support homeowners and businesses who want to install solar panels on their properties.

The official Budget, as published by the government, contained the word “solar” once.

Lola Karpf, a spokesperson for the charity, went on to say that that they “didn’t see as much as they wanted to see” within the Budget, in relation to their ongoing campaign for greater rooftop solar deployment across the country.

The CPRE stated that while the government aims for 65 percent of solar capacity on the ground and 35 percent on rooftops, it believes this ratio should be reversed.

They said that “we have conducted research in the past that shows that we can put 60% of solar on rooftops and that would meet government targets with 40% on the ground.”

The charity had already claimed a victory earlier this year, when the government announced that it was planning for solar panels to be fitted to most new-build homes in England by 2027, and the CPRE have now said that they want to see “every suitable, new and existing home with rooftop solar” in the coming decade.

According the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, over 1.5 million homes in the UK have some form of solar installation as of October 2025, representing 4% of all households, and an increase of over 600,000 in five years.

Ground mounted solar schemes have also grown rapidly in the past five years, with the number of sites of 25 megawatts or more almost doubling since 2020.

This surge has led politicians from government and opposition parties to oppose large developments in their own constituencies.

Earlier this year, Sarah Champion, the Labour MP for Rotherham, voiced her opposition to a local 3,500 acre scheme.

She told the BBC in October that the proposed site was taking up “productive agricultural land, which is at a premium in Rotherham, and the loss of such valuable green space will have a serious adverse effect on my constituents.”

The countryside charity did have some praise for the government on their budget announcements, going on to say that their decision to inject “£1.5 billion into a warm homes plan” was really encouraging as it “towards supporting lower income households, social rent homes” and they were keen for more rooftop solar that connects to heat pumps and electric vehicle charging.

Henry Lloyd’s Blog

Labour shines away from solar in the budget