Repairs to Solar Panelled Water Pump

The project is located at Worcestershire Wildlife Trust’s Knapp and Papermill nature reserve near Malvern and involves capital work that will improve grazing on one of the meadows. Papermill Meadow is a valuable wildflower meadow and forms part of the Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) which covers the reserve and the wider Leigh Brook Valley. Due to a lack of vehicular access to the meadow, it is impossible to take hay cuts and instead we rely on autumn grazing with cattle, in order to maintain the site’s important biodiversity value. This requires water for the troughs, which is pumped from an existing well into a water tank. The pump is solar powered but unfortunately due to a growth in the trees on a nearby ridge, the panel no longer receives enough sunlight and the pump is failing to work. We need to relocate the solar panel to a sunnier spot so that we can resume grazing and continue to manage and protect this important wildlife habitat.