National Grid East Anglia "GREEN" Pylons Project

This page will be the repository for Parish Council information about National Grid’s proposed major new pylon route across East Anglia, which would pass through Langham Parish.

We will also provide further information and links here, to assist any villagers who wish to undertake their own research and make their own representations, regarding this huge potential infrastructure project.

Langham Parish Council Position Statement

East Anglia Green Energy Enablement Planning Proposal (Planning Application 221119)

Langham Parish Council, which represents an Essex village of around 1,200 residents objects to the above planning proposal based on a complete lack of transparency in arriving at the proposed solution put forward for consideration during the National Grid non-statutory public consultation, which runs until 16th June 2022.

The proposal does not provide an analysis of the distinct options available to deliver a 400kV electricity line over a distance of approximately 180km covering Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex plus a new 400kV connection sub station. There is a real concern that although this is called a public consultation the decision has already been made by National Grid for a new pylon run to be overground. Other power trunking projects around the UK are being planned for delivery by subsea cables in advance of the East Anglian “Green” project (eg. the Eastern HVDC Link connecting Eastern Scotland with Yorkshire). Why then is subsea not being considered as a serious alternative to the East Anglian “Green” project?

Langham Parish Council is of the opinion that, as far as is practicable, new offshore generated electricity should be transmitted offshore, making landfall as close to the target population centres as possible. Consequently, we support the OffSET Task Force, campaigning for an offshore grid, which is firmly in the interests of business (both offshore windfarms themselves and wider interests such as Sizewell and Felixstowe Freeport) and would help to futureproof the network.

National Grid themselves estimate savings of £6bn for consumers from a coordinated offshore grid. Yet, despite all of this, the ‘top level’ choice of overground vs undersea has been presented by National Grid as a ‘fait accompli’, without any public consultation. Instead, the consultation is restricted to expressing views on a narrow ‘swathe’ of overland routing, through precious open countryside, offering no real policy choice to numerous villages along the route. Plans to bury the cable to cross the Dedham Vale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) endorse the view that this scheme is a real blot on the landscape and will affect future tourism at all the beautiful villages along the route. Also, there is little information on what the AONB interconnections sites might look like and the scope of these.

Given that East Anglia GREEN project involved an initial decision to reject an undersea option, and that this is meant to be a public consultation on the ‘choice’ of how the electricity is transmitted, at the very least we would expect the Government to expand the consultation to permit the public to express their views on the wider choice of overland vs undersea.

Langham Parish Council are engaged with this project and supports the response to Government that had been compiled by Essex County and Colchester Borough Councils. This states:

“National Grid’s current proposals for a new over-ground pylon route across much of its East Anglia is totally unacceptable. We fully support of the concept of North Sea wind farms to generate abundant, cheap, clean electricity. Furthermore, the recent increase in energy prices, coupled with the global insecurity of energy supplies gives added impetus to this strategy. At the recent public consultation events, National Grid confirmed that upgrades to the offshore route was a viable alternative.

Therefore, our strongly preferred approach is an upgrade to the offshore route. By doing so, the environmental damage, disruption and despoliation that would be caused to East Anglia by the installation of hundreds of over-ground pylons would be minimised.

We demand that National Grid holds a full public consultation on all options, with full details and costings being made available for public scrutiny, not simply an informal consultation on their pre-selected over-ground route.

We will continue to lobby National Grid and the Government to ensure that all necessary infrastructure is delivered in a sustainable manner. For us, this means moving the proposed new pylon route to an offshore location.”

We would urge all Langham residents to have their say on National Grid’s consultation questionnaire on their consultation portal. We would also invite you to consider signing the petition for offshore upgrades as an alternative.

www.pylonseastanglia.co.uk

This campaign group have also recently released an alternative consultation questionnaire (their Pylon Action Survey) which asks a wider range of questions than those offered by National Grid in their official survey. If you agree that the National Grid consultation is too narrow in its scope, then please consider completing this alternative survey as well.

Langham Parish Council 7th June 2022

Langham Parish Council Response to National Grid Project Scoping Report (sent 5th Dec 2022)

Dear Ms Cottam

eastangliagreen@planninginspectorate.gov.uk

We set out below Langham Parish Council’s response to National Grid’s scoping report for East Anglia Green.

The parish of Langham, 2,977 acres (1,205 hectares) in area, lies immediately north of the town of Colchester.

Historically there is significant evidence in the parish of very early settlement, including the sites of Neolithic barrows and a Roman farmstead. Initial habitation and development seem to have begun in the north, on the site of the Hall and church and moved south. In the Middle Ages, the land south of Park Lane was a Royal Forest and the last area to be farmed.

Langham village abuts the Dedham Vale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) and our beautiful and historic landscapes compliment the AONB. The proposal to take a direct route through the AONB and to use underground cables there to reduce any landscape and visual effects of the infrastructure is a recognition that areas such as Langham are not receiving any due consideration and will be subject to the blot on the landscape caused by massive overhead Pylons which can be seen from a great distance.

Langham Parish Council are one of many smaller bodies that represent the majority views of its residents which in this case is around 1,200 people. This situation is replicated the length and breadth of East Anglia and the messages that are emerging from other parishes are very much the same. There has been a lack of transparency over the projects that should have been considered prior to this preferred solution being presented by National Grid and we believe that alternative solutions and the rationale for not choosing them should be made clear.

Excess wind power from the North Sea must be transmitted via a coordinated offshore grid. Such a grid has been shown by National Grid ESO (in 2020) not only to be deliverable but hugely beneficial. Fifty percent less infrastructure will be required for a coordinated grid than the current piecemeal approach. That results in cost savings for consumers of £6billion and benefits the environment and communities.

We submitted concerns to the non-statutory consultation but note that the scoping report makes no reference to these. We request that you take note of the Essex Suffolk Norfolk Pylons action group’s note on the scoping report and we include a link to this document with this submission. It sets out topics which need to be scoped in and points to legal deficiencies with the process.

We are concerned that the scope of the work to be conducted is too narrow. There is a lengthy list of items that are scoped out (summarised in section 18) and some may affect our Parish. We do not have the technical knowledge to comment properly and must rely on the Inspector’s expertise.

Chapter 2 of the scoping document needs to be updated: both sections of the Colchester Local Plan have now been adopted, so the 2008 Core Strategy and associated development policies are now superseded.

As previously mentioned, our biggest concern is that the scoping paper fails to properly address the reasonable alternative preferred by East Anglian residents, Councils and MPs. Which is an offshore grid. An environmental statement that skirts around this alternative cannot have full credibility in the community.

This view is supported by para 1.1.5 of the scoping document which explains that the purpose of the East Anglia Green project is to connect offshore wind generation, nuclear

power generation and interconnectors to the Main Interconnected Transmission System. But the proposed ES scope is limited to a Norwich-Tilbury link and we fear that the bigger picture will not be properly addressed.

A focus solely on the Norwich-Tilbury connection will produce a perverse answer. Once the power has been taken onshore and converted to AC it will be prohibitively expensive to convert it back to DC for an offshore leg. It is wrong to rule out a proper offshore grid on this basis.

Finally, we seek to ensure that National Grid takes fully into account the impact on Langham Parish’s priority habitats, listed buildings and other Langham receptors. The Black Brook Valley itself is within the Colchester Conservation Area, the twelfth-century Parish Church of

St. Mary and the Langham Hall Estate are set in exquisite surroundings on the ridge above the Stour valleyside, adjacent to the Essex Way, a walking path which follows the route

of a mediaeval track way through the Essex forests. The southern farmlands which form a very important “green break” between the village and the town of Colchester and also contains the remains of the Second World War Boxted Airfield and the Museum. The southern farmlands in particular have a high exposure to the visual impact of the proposed Pylon route. There is an extensive network of footpaths throughout the village, which are well used by villagers and visitors that value the countryside and their access to it.

As a licence holder National Grid has specific duties to uphold in relation to the desirability of preserving amenity of certain aspects of the environment and mitigating any effect which its proposals would have on the natural beauty of the local environment under Section 38 and Schedule 9 of the Electricity Act 1989.

East Anglia Green will dramatically affect Langham’s historic landscapes and natural habitats, and we repeat our opposition to this proposal.

Also shown below is a link to the Langham Village Design Statement (VDS) which provides more information on Langham sites and associated pictures.

Yours Sincerely

Langham Parish Council

Link to Essex Suffolk Norfolk Note on Scoping Report : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VOf-rFewQO0UO7EPO8k8zZhRmfFEx_2q/view?fbclid=IwAR13VBgG1Sx-mF7B0NKS88RaXPqNso0T3tE7WRxsbi9ykacQ4mzy29LiFuQ

Link to Langham VDS: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QiGL1l4hI1MfjVg_exMeMaekUrfMuFQK/view