Midlands

Farm the Midlands and you're really farming two different regions joined by the M1. To the east, Lincolnshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire carry large arable and horticultural holdings, not unlike East Anglia's. That's good ground-mount country, in the right locations.

To the west, Shropshire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire are known for orchards, hops and mixed livestock, on smaller, more varied land. There, rooftop and small-scale ground-mount solar tend to make more sense than a large single array.

The region's defining feature for solar economics, though, is what sits alongside the farmland. That's the 'Golden Triangle' — the corridor of motorway-junction logistics and warehousing running roughly Northampton–Leicester–Birmingham. It has become the densest concentration of large-roof distribution space in the UK.

That matters to a nearby landowner in two ways. First, it has added real electricity demand to the local grid over the past decade, which can affect connection headroom. Second, neighbouring land sometimes carries logistics-development value that competes directly with a long-term solar lease. That trade-off is worth weighing with independent advice, rather than assuming solar is the only option on the table.

For farms not adjacent to the logistics corridor, the more familiar rural calculation applies. Assess the roof or land on its own merits, and check grid headroom early. Then weigh self-supply, export and lease income as a genuine business decision.

Much of the region's arable land already resembles East Anglia's in scale and flatness. So ground-mount schemes here can follow broadly the same playbook. That holds, provided demand from the corridor itself hasn't already absorbed the connection point.