Blyth and Ashington
Blyth and Ashington has 150 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 54,000 homes. When the wires are too full to carry the power, Britain pays wind farms to switch off instead. No wind farm here is paid that way — almost all of it goes to wind farms in Scotland. That cost is shared across every bill in Britain, so households here pay for it too: about £92 a year per household, £4.3m across the constituency's 46,755 homes. There is also 29 MW of wind running here on the local network. If that gets switched off, no national record shows it.
Ranks 35 of 650 for clean power approved and not built.
What is stuck, and why
| Project and developer | Tech | Size | Why it is stuck |
|---|---|---|---|
| High Brockland Farm, Brock Lane - Battery Energy Storage SystemBluefield Renewable Developments Limited | Battery | 70 MW | Approved less than a year ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref 25/01726/FUL |
| Burnt House Farm, Nedderton Village - Battery Energy Storage SystemBluefield Renewable Developments Limited | Battery | 50 MW | Waiting 16 months for a planning decisionWho can move it: Northumberland Council · planning ref 25/01144/FUL |
| Low Horton Farm - Solar FarmBluefield Renewable Developments Limited | Solar | 50 MW18,000 homes | Approved 4 years ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref 22/01153/RENE |
| Broadway House Farm Solar FarmBluefield Renewable Developments Limited | Solar | 50 MW18,000 homes | Approved 3 years ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref 23/02205/RENE |
| Burnt House Farm - Solar FarmBluefield Renewable Developments Limited | Solar | 50 MW18,000 homes | Approved 4 years ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref 22/01082/RENE |
| West Sleekburn - Battery Storage CompoundEnviromena Asset Management UK Limited | Battery | 30 MW | Approved 4 years ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref 22/01725/FUL |
Compared with its neighbours
| Constituency | Approved, not built | Running | Paid to switch off |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blyth and Ashington | 150 MW | 32 MW | not visible |
| Hexham | 23 MW | 56 MW | not visible |
| Cramlington and Killingworth | 31 MW | 4 MW | not visible |
| North Northumberland | 13 MW | 187 MW | not visible |
Blyth and Ashington has more approved-and-waiting capacity than any of its neighbouring seats.
The rest of the briefing
- Every approval each project still needs, and which of them the public can see
- What building them would mean here — community payments, business rates and construction work
- Drafted parliamentary questions and letters, filled in with this seat's figures
- 3 story angles for local reporting
- A two-page PDF, and a newsroom edition with the references and who to call
Everything above needs no account, and neither does the full seat page, the method or this constituency's raw data. The account covers the packaged briefing and its PDF, and nothing else.