Significant Energy Infrastructure Projects: Suffolk Coast

Farmers from Woodbridge to Leiston, and parishes from Friston to Walberswick and Yoxford to Peasenhall, all ask the same thing: why are these projects popping up with no co-ordination, and why is there no legal requirement for them to work together? It is our communities and our environment that have to endure the cumulative impact of all this.

Developers are also failing to put proper mitigations in place or to listen to the concerns of local residents, which is having a real impact. Farmers have told me of issues engaging with energy developers when they have raised objections to cables being buried to a depth of less than 1.8 metres on their land, in breach of electrical safety guidance, leaving them unable to use the land for arable farming. Energy developers have been unwilling to engage, which means that land risks being taken out of arable food production permanently. In laying any cables on active agricultural land, developers should guarantee that arable farmland will be safeguarded for future farming use, and I tabled another amendment to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill that would have made it a legal requirement for energy developers to lay cables to a minimum depth of 1.8 metres.

The depth of cables is an issue not just for farmers, but for offshore shipping. Members will appreciate that I have shipping lanes off the coast of my constituency, and the Harwich Haven Authority has told me that it is concerned that energy developers must do more to engage with it to ensure that cables are buried at a sufficient depth that projects do not compromise navigational safety. The Sunk area around Harwich Haven is a vital and highly complex shipping zone. Any offshore developments must be planned with strict adherence to safety requirements.

The UK has let developers lead the conversation and the strategy. We have ended up with a mismatch of proposals, in the wrong place, with no co-ordination and no desire to think of better alternatives. Other countries are stealing a march. Holistic network design criteria are adopted and adhered to in North sea countries including Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. As a result, they choose brownfield sites at the outset for their energy infrastructure hubs and, in doing so, manage to avoid adverse impacts on communities and ecologies.

Places such as Zeebrugge and Rotterdam industrial zones are chosen for building substations, with space to build future projects, including hydrogen storage. Those projects are co-ordinated in order to minimise needless damage, maximise efficiencies and move at pace. For the same reasons, energy developers in the UK should be required to pursue as a first option brownfield hubs where multiple projects can co-exist without any adverse impact on nature.

We need to create a legal duty for developers working in the same area to exchange information, seek opportunities for shared infrastructure, reduce cumulative impact and align timelines. A framework of co-ordination, co-design, community benefit and compensation would mean that communities, town and parish councils and the Government could see the whole picture, not just the smallest of fragments. So many of my constituents are devastated by the cumulative impact that these energy projects within a 10-mile radius are having on nature, and no one organisation has ever looked at it.

We can get this right. If we do, we can deliver on our climate ambitions and protect nature at the same time, but it will require greater leadership, oversight and scrutiny, and greater emphasis on making sure that we co-ordinate, plan and implement a clean, green energy revolution that is strategic and not just whack-a-mole. It must be rooted in knowing the land and the geography, and not in the whims of the developer. Getting this right now will mean better protections for our natural environment, better safeguards for our local communities and a lasting legacy for the next generation.

Our mission as a Government is to move towards clean power, making sure that we deliver our energy security; and every wind turbine, solar panel and nuclear power station that we build protects us from future energy shocks and delivers our energy security here at home. So, it is a critical mission.

New energy infrastructure—indeed, new infrastructure of any kind—is always controversial in some circumstances; there are always impacts and there are always differing views about whether it should be built or not. That is why we have a planning system that seeks to balance the pros and cons of applications against a framework that sets out, as a country, that we have to build things somewhere. So, the planning system is there to make sure that the planning process is rigorous and open, but ultimately so that we make decisions and build things.

For obvious reasons, I will not comment on individual planning applications; they will be decided in due course in the usual way. However, I will make a fundamental point about why we are on this journey and why we think that building this infrastructure is so important. The reason is that the only way to reduce our exposure to the volatility of fossil fuels is to build a new clean power system. That means new nuclear, renewables and storage working together to bring down bills and tackle the climate crisis.

I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal is aware of the NSIP regime, but for the purposes of the hordes of people that I am sure are watching this debate at home, let me say a little about it. The “nationally significant” in NSIP—nationally significant infrastructure project—is really important for us to recognise. The reason we have an NSIP process is that some decisions have to be made that local communities might not be able to make in isolation because they are of critical national importance, whether that is in transport, water or energy projects. It is important that we have this process and it is a robust process, involving the Planning Inspectorate, and various statutory bodies such as national environment bodies. Projects are judged on a case-by-case basis, weighed against the local impacts, be they environmental, economic or social. The need for this process is set out for all to see in local and national planning policy, and of course national policy statements are scrutinised by this place before being agreed.

When an applicant submits an application for a development consent order or DCO, the Planning Inspectorate, particularly for energy NSIPs, will appoint an independent inspector to examine the application. A recommendation will be made to the Secretary of State about whether permission should be given and the Secretary of State makes the final decision; that decision might be made by a junior Minister on their behalf, but the law states that the decision is still in the name of the Secretary of State. Such applications are considered against the relevant national policy statements as approved by Parliament, which make the case for infrastructure and all the various considerations that have to be made.

Cumulative impact is an issue that my hon. Friend raised with me today, and that a number of hon. Friends have raised with me previously. I know that it is a particular concern. Projects must consider their cumulative impact as part of their applications. Also, the local authority that hosts the infrastructure and surrounding local authorities—given that often these projects are on the borders with other local authorities—are invited to submit impact reports as part of the process, to ensure that the potential impacts of an individual project are taken into account, based on local knowledge.

Of course, there are also opportunities for local communities to have a say. Members of the public can get involved not just in the planning application itself, but in the pre-consultation process and in the discussions before applications emerge. They can also register through the Planning Inspectorate during the pre-examination phase.

On planning reform, we are mindful as a Government that the planning process can take much longer than we think it should. Let me say at the outset that that is not about trying to get to the decision that one particular group might want; it is about getting to any kind of decision much faster, so that instead of projects and communities being held up for year after year, with people not knowing whether something will proceed or not, decisions are made.

The average time to secure development consent for NSIPs has increased from 2.6 years in 2012 to 3.6 years in 2024. Such delays cost a vast amount of money—£1.5 million a month for some large projects—and that of course impacts taxpayers and bill payers, who foot the bill for these projects.

There is always a balance to be struck, as we have said throughout the passage of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. Of course we want communities to have a say and we want the process to be as robust as possible, but we need to get decisions and end the uncertainty as quickly as possible, and the Bill will be key to improving the process. Our reforms are about trying to make sure that the system is flexible, proportionate and responsive to Government priorities. The Government must deliver the change on which we were elected; in the energy space, that means building the clean power system of the future. The planning system should reflect the priorities of the democratically elected Government of the day.

Public engagement is key to this process. We want communities to participate in the planning system, but as I will come back to in a moment when I talk about strategic planning, we also want communities to have a say much earlier in the process. It is not just about individual applications, but about the whole question of infrastructure in communities more generally. We are consulting on further proposals to streamline the NSIP process, including for new guidance on engagement following proposals in the Bill to remove statutory pre-application consultation requirements, and we encourage feedback from communities. We are also keen to hear views on the practical next steps and on how the system will actually work. I understand that the consultation is now open and will close at the end of October.

On the siting of energy projects, I agree with my hon. Friend that we should be much more strategic as a country in considering what the future of our energy system should look like, and in planning holistically what infrastructure should be built and where. She made a powerful point about the sheer amount in her part of the country. Had we been strategically planning a decade or so ago, we might have avoided some of those planning decisions, so it is important that we take this step. I regret the fact that we have not done so for the past few decades, but we are moving forward with a strategic view as quickly as possible.

The problem with being the Minister for Energy Security is that we are not short of acronyms—let me just go through some of them. The strategic spatial energy plan, or SSEP, and the centralised strategic network plan, or CSNP, are two crucial parts of how we will provide a holistic design much more carefully. The strategic spatial energy plan is about looking at the whole of Great Britain and how we map out the future of our energy system, and it will be published by the end of 2026—there is work going on at the moment. The centralised strategic network plan will follow, so that we can work out what infrastructure we need on the grid in order to meet the strategic spatial energy plan, and it will be published by the end of 2027.

This is about taking a much more active planning role in the future of energy right across England, Scotland and Wales, both inland and at sea. My hon. Friend rightly brings both of those things from her constituency into this discussion. It will be about assessing the optimal locations for things and the type of energy infrastructure that we need in the future. We must look beyond a developer’s five or 10-year plan and ensure that we meet future energy demand, knowing that it will significantly increase in the years ahead.

The centralised strategic network plan will build on the SSEP by ensuring that our transmission infrastructure meets the need and, crucially, is co-ordinated. My hon. Friend made that point very powerfully, and I was in Denmark last week to talk about this very question with EU Energy Ministers. The North sea is already congested with a lot of infrastructure, and the only way we will effectively plan the future of the North sea— for a whole range of uses, from fishing and energy to carbon capture and storage—is by working together. We will be part of much more co-ordination on the infrastructure in the North sea.

It all feeds into my hon. Friend’s point: we will only get this right by having a holistic view and enabling the efficient and co-ordinated use of infrastructure. That is better for communities affected by this issue directly, but we can also bring down the cost of building infrastructure if we plan it more coherently. That will benefit every person right across the country.

In conclusion, I again thank my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal for securing the debate. I know that we will continue to have these conversations. In this job I sometimes wish, for a number of reasons, that we could turn back the clock and do things slightly differently. I have been told repeatedly that, unfortunately, that is not an option, although I continue to push for it. Strategic planning is one of those regrets. As a country, whatever the political view, we will look back and wish that we had planned our energy system more holistically across the country. We are doing that. That does not change some of the decisions that have been made and some of the decisions that are in the system now, but it will allow us to build a more holistic system in the future.