Folkestone and Hythe
Folkestone and Hythe has 1.1 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 400 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, £3.8m across the constituency's 41,002 homes. There is also 60 MW of wind running here on the local network. If that gets switched off, no national record shows it.
Ranks 404 of 650 for clean power approved and not built.
What is stuck, and why
| Project and developer | Tech | Size | Why it is stuck |
|---|---|---|---|
| St Mary in the Marsh - Solar PanelsEnviromena | Solar | 5,800 homes 16 MW |
Waiting 1.3 years for a planning decisionWho can move it: Folkestone and Hythe Council |
| Martin Farm, St. Marys Road - Solar PanelsEnviromena Project Management UK Limited | Solar | 5,800 homes 16 MW |
Approved less than a year ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company |
| Harringe Brooks Wind ParkEcotricity | Onshore wind | 13,000 homes 15 MW |
Waiting 14.2 years for a planning decisionWho can move it: Folkestone and Hythe Council |
What else is in the briefing
- All 3 projects, each with its planning reference and the organisation that holds the next decision
- Every approval a project still needs, and which of them the public can see
- What building them would mean here — community payments, business rates and construction work
- How Folkestone and Hythe compares with its neighbouring constituencies
- 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