HANSARD
Nationally Significant Energy Infrastructure Projects
- 11:00 am
- I beg to move,That this House has considered the contribution of nationally significant energy infrastructure projects to communities.It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. I am grateful for having secured the debate, and I welcome colleagues across the House who will want to contribute.With this debate I seek to ask two simple questions. First, what contribution should nationally significant energy infrastructure projects make to the communities that host them? Secondly, how should communities be supported when they face disruption from significant energy projects? As the MP for Suffolk Coastal, a constituency that shoulders more of the burden than perhaps any other part of the country, I am well placed to ask those questions on behalf of my constituents.It is often said that up to 30% of Britain’s future energy will be generated in or transmitted through Suffolk Coastal, if planning permission is approved. We will host multiple significant infrastructure projects within a 10-mile radius, including LionLink at Walberswick; Sea Link near Aldeburgh; Sizewell C, which is Europe’s largest energy project, in Leiston; and converter stations at Friston and Saxmundham. All those projects sit in or cut through nationally important landscapes: sites of special scientific interest, the Suffolk heritage coast and Royal Society for the Protection of Birds reserves, all served by B roads and country lanes and all arriving at once, without any co-ordination, and some projects without any serious community benefit.I have raised this issue many times in the House, and the Minister has heard about it in much detail, both in this Chamber and one to one. He will be glad to know that I am here not to repeat many of those points but to set out new challenges and alternatives. I remind him, though, that my constituents are not opposed to clean energy—many are proud that Suffolk will be leading the charge against climate change in our drive towards green energy and away from fossil fuels—but they are taking on enormous disruption.Suffolk Coastal’s dashboard is now flashing red, and we are asking for more help. Businesses, people, community and nature are all asking for more help. The community investment programme should be the main opportunity to provide it, but we need better leadership. I ask Government to do what the previous Government failed to do: to provide leadership, which will sometimes mean challenging developers and telling them that my community and this country deserve better.I want to set out what the Government have done, and I do not want my case to be mistaken for opposition to their policy. In March 2025, the Government published the “Community funds for transmission infrastructure” guidance, which included £200,000 per kilometre of overhead line, £530,000 per substation or converter station, and bill discounts of up to £250 a year for 10 years for nearby households.
- I commend the hon. Lady; I spoke to her beforehand to ascertain her intentions. The Government proposals for mandatory community benefit funds and local bill discounts are a welcome step forward, and we should look at the positives. Working families see only increased energy prices and no benefit. Does the hon. Lady agree that robust statutory enforcement mechanisms should be put in place to ensure that developers cannot simply tick a corporate social responsibility box? Does she further agree that the Government must guarantee that such projects deliver real, permanent economic legacies, such as localised grid upgrades, direct household bill reductions and long-term apprenticeships? If they do those three things, we will go a long way. I ask the Minister to make it better.
- I agree with a lot of what the hon. Gentleman says. The projects that we are discussing should deliver that as part of their long-term investment, and many of those things do not need to sit within the community investment programme itself.The guidance also included an obligation for the transmission owners, National Grid and ScottishPower Renewables, to run grant programmes, ranging from £10,000 grassroots grants up to £500,000 strategic grants. Importantly, the guidance rests on five key principles, including lasting legacy and transparent outcomes. If the developers depart from the guidance, they must explain why. It is a serious framework and the Government deserve credit for it. But the rates are recommended rates, not diktats. They should be the minimum, not the maximum. In Suffolk Coastal, we are seeing the minimum rather than the maximum far too often.
- I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. She is making an important point about the fact that we need not just the minimum but the maximum. We need really strong commitments. The Cleve Hill solar development in the village of Graveney in my constituency is huge. It has obliterated 900 acres of agricultural land and marshland. While it has been in construction, there has been enormous disruption to the local village and schools, and damage to the roads and to people’s properties. I want my constituents to get proper compensation and ongoing economic benefit—not just lip service in the form of a playground or cycle path, but something that recognises the massive impact of the development on their lives.
- I could not agree more. We need to make sure that we compensate for the impact, especially when projects are built out. I will come to that later in my speech.The National Grid’s Sea Link energy transmission project, a 138-kilometre interconnector between Pegwell bay in Kent and Suffolk Coastal, has a proposed community fund of £2.1 million, split between Kent and Suffolk. Let me break that down: that is roughly 0.1% of Sea Link’s total project budget. For a project that cuts through some of the most important nature sites in our country, in a county proud of nature-based tourism, 0.1% is not an investment strategy; it is a rounding error. It might meet the letter of the guidance, but it falls far short on delivering for our communities. The guidance is explicit that funds should deliver lasting benefits. I want a community-owned energy fund that is locally owned, locally governed and delivers permanent accountable benefit.
- As my hon. Friend knows, the other part of that project is hosted partly in my constituency, and we agree that £2.1 million is a rounding error in the National Grid’s project budget. Does she agree that if we are to establish properly the principle of host communities being able to truly benefit from the energy infrastructure that they will be home to, there should be proper accountability? An energy foundation should be established to benefit that community for energy purposes, rather than it being bought off with playgrounds or university fees for a handful of residents.
- It will not surprise you, Ms Vaz, that I agree with every point that my hon. Friend just made. She and I have spoken about this at length. I was about to say that under the current Sea Link plans—the £2.1 million rounding error of investment—my community is likely to have to bid for £20,000 funding pots. We can barely get a spade in the ground for a playground for £20,000. We want access to bigger sums that can deliver real ambition from these projects in the long term, where and when we need it.It is worth noting that under National Grid’s plans, training opportunities sit inside the community fund and are counted against the total. That is plainly wrong. Local jobs should be a contractual commitment built into the design project, not a line inside a community fund. The guidance states that community funds are not in addition to benefits such as local employment; I gently suggest that some developers have not read the guidance.I have raised many times the fact that there is no legal duty on nationally significant infrastructure projects to co-ordinate, even when building in the same area at the same time and impacting the same community. The Minister has heard me talk about this at length. My community is expected to host multiple billion-pound schemes simultaneously without statutory tools to enforce co-ordination. Ofgem now chairs co-ordination meetings, which is welcome, but it can only convene, and there is no obligation to attend and no powers to compel change. Co-ordination by good will is not co-ordination, and there is not even a requirement for community funds to be co-ordinated. In my constituency, we will likely see Sea Link and LionLink running separate investment programmes while co-locating on adjacent land.My constituents are therefore asking for three things: better management of the cumulative impact on businesses and communities; to be properly compensated when disruption causes real harm in real time; and genuine ambition to protect and nurture nature in how projects are designed and delivered.
- The Minister knows that in the highlands we have had three massive pump storage sites move to the next level of development. Cumulatively, they will store 4 GW in an area that has the highest fuel poverty in Britain, at a cost of £5 billion. At the moment, the pumps will do very little for the highland economy, as there will be almost no local jobs, no legacy housing and no community benefit. It is a sorry state; it is all downside and no upside for the people of the highlands. I would love to see that addressed.
- I feel the hon. Member’s pain, and I share many of his frustrations in the arguments that I am laying out today. If our communities are hosting vital infrastructure, they should feel the benefit.I was talking about Amanda, who runs the Refill shop in Leiston. Her business is struggling and she needs support today. These businesses could flourish once construction is complete. Neither Amanda nor Tom is asking for extra money; they are just asking that the generous £250 million already committed by Sizewell C for community investment be made accessible to businesses that are genuinely feeling the impact right now. Millions of pounds from Sizewell C’s fund has already reached citizens advice, Home-Start Suffolk and local schools and sports clubs. That is great, as it is genuine, lasting community benefit. But businesses are also asking for support to survive. We need to hear that cry for help.Do the Government agree that National Grid’s £2.1 million for Sea Link meets the standards set by their own March 2025 guidance? If not, what action will follow? Will the Government ask Ofgem to review the fund’s adequacy before consent is granted? Will they back communities asking for a community-owned fund, as the guidance’s own principles support? Will they look at the impact of Europe’s largest energy construction project on businesses in my constituency, and what can be done to support those who are struggling because of it?Villages and market towns in my constituency are breaking under the strain of these projects—they are flashing red on the dashboard. We are asking for help, and for the Government to step in where unintended consequences risk affecting the legacy of projects such as Sizewell C. My constituents want to be equal partners around the table, and they deserve to be treated as such. I urge the Government to enforce the framework they have built, and to make clear that communities like Suffolk Coastal should not accept less than they are owed, nor pay the price for the UK’s energy goals.
- 11:13 am
- It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship today, Ms Vaz.I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter) not only for securing the debate but for all the conversations we have had. She should never fear repeating the same message; it is important. She does a great job championing her community in this place; she has always sought to do so, in all the meetings I have had with her. I might add that she has also sought to be constructive, as she reflected in her opening remarks. Her constituents are not against the move to clean power, and know how important it is, but they recognise that there are impacts locally. That is a really important place to be on this issue.Communities that host nationally significant infrastructure obviously experience disruption and change, and that comes with real consequences. I understand the challenges that such infrastructure places on communities at a local level, and it is right that we not only take account of those concerns when they are raised but do everything we can to provide those people with the community benefits. They are hosting infrastructure on behalf of the nation, and they should benefit from that.This important debate also comes to the heart of the broader question facing the country, and why we have, as a Government, decided to move even further and faster to deliver the infrastructure that not only delivers economic growth and energy security, but gets us off fossil fuels as quickly as possible. Infrastructure does matter, and I am not going to shirk away from making the argument that after a long period of not building the infrastructure this country needs, we have to build it. But communities have to be at the heart of that decision as well.
- I recognise what my hon. Friend says, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter) pointed out, these are guidelines at the moment rather than obligations. Because they are only guidelines, they can be ignored. Including things like jobs and traineeships within the community allowance limits the genuine potential benefit for host communities. We are grateful that we now have biodiversity net gain for nationally significant infrastructure projects. There should be a similar obligation to make sure that communities benefit and have ownership of and accountability for how that money is spent. I will say this now on the record: £2.1 million, as my hon. Friend said, is a rounding error. That should be multiplied by 10 if we are really going to get the benefit for our communities in the long term.
- Let me come to both of those points. First, we are potentially confusing two different things. Community benefits for transmission infrastructure are mandatory; we have separately consulted on whether community benefits for wider energy projects should be mandatory, and we will respond to that consultation soon, because I recognise many of the points that have been made. What we do not want to do, though, is create one-size-fits-all solutions in Whitehall that will work differently in different communities. As a Minister, I do not want to sit here and say: “This is how your community benefit will work in your community.” Instead, I want to empower communities to figure out how that works best in their local area. I have seen models of that in all the visits that I have made across the country.The minimum standards should be there to make sure that the process is transparent, with communities and not developers in the driving seat, and that there is long-term certainty. I do not think that we should say that play parks and cycle paths are bad things to invest in, but there should be some long-term investments alongside them. I have seen some good examples, just in the past few weeks, of that being done well. We need to separate out those two things.I have wrestled with the cost point as well. In principle, I would like to see communities having even more community benefits, but we have to recognise that the cost of them will be borne by bill payers right across the country. The balance that we are trying to strike, as a Government determined to tackle the cost of living, is to have communities benefiting as much as they possibly can but without putting up bills significantly for all bill payers across the country, which would be a disproportionate impact at a time when the affordability crisis is our No. 1 priority.
- On the point about considering the community benefit, what counts as a community is really important. In some circumstances—this has come up in my local area—a large geographical area is considered as a community, even though the number of households that are very substantially affected is very small. It is what they want that should really matter. Yes, of course I care about what the wider community wants, but we need to think about the small number of households in which there has been a real impact on people’s day-to-day lives.
- I totally accept the hon. Member’s point, although the point has been rightly raised that the impact of building these projects is often felt by a much wider community, which is why the community benefits are wider. I should also say that we have to separate questions of compensation from questions of community benefit. Compensation is paid, as part of a process, to those who have been significantly disrupted or whose land has been changed in whatever way: that is a contractual negotiation between a landowner or resident and a developer, and it is not for the Government to intervene in it. Community benefits are about a much wider view of how these projects benefit the wider community.I take the point about the design of the community, which is really important. With something like the Sea Link offshore cable, it is sometimes hard to look at what the community around it would look like. We have wrestled with how to define it: there is a danger that if we have too broad a definition, the community benefit funds will not get to the people who would benefit most. There is probably more that we can do on that, and I am very open-minded about contributions from hon. Members on that point.On the level of benefit—I know that these points have been raised before—the electricity bill discount will give the people living closest to the infrastructure money off their bills. We are seeking to remind people that the more of this infrastructure we build, the fewer constraints we have on the grid and the more we can get cheap, clean power into homes and businesses and bring down bills for everyone. There is an impact beyond the projects themselves.
- I do appreciate that argument, and I have toyed with saying this publicly, for good reason. Of course that is true, but in my constituency I also have lots of people who are off grid and are reliant on heating oil. With a lot of this infrastructure being built and hosted in my community, many people will not feel the benefit if they are reliant on other forms of energy. Until we understand that, we will not get to the heart of the frustrations that people living in Suffolk Coastal and other rural areas feel about this upgrade.
- I take that point, to an extent, although being off the gas grid does not mean being off grid from electricity, so those people will benefit from cheaper electricity bills. I think that electrification is the answer, to support households off heating oil wherever possible. I know that that is not possible in every case, but there will be a lot of households that we can move away from heating oil, which protects them in the long term. We have also provided support for people on heating oil in the ongoing middle east crisis.We have produced a working paper and a call for evidence on community benefits, which we are going through at the moment. We are also going further around shared ownership of low-carbon infrastructure. This Government do not see this issue as being just about community benefits. It is also about how we get communities either owning the entirety of the infrastructure themselves and holding the wealth that is generated in their community, or at least owning a share in it.To their credit, in the Infrastructure Act 2015 the previous Government—although I suspect that they may not have realised this when they passed the Act—created a power to allow shared ownership. It was never enacted. We are now seeking to work out how to enact it so that communities can genuinely own a share. We know the difference that it makes: ownership matters, because it puts communities right in the driving seat when it comes to what they spend that money on. Whether they choose to make long-term or shorter-term decisions would be in their hands. That makes a hugely important difference to communities, as I have seen on visits.