No.290 of 650 · approved, not built MP: Mark Ferguson (Labour) England

Gateshead Central and Whickham

Gateshead Central and Whickham has 3.4 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 1,200 homes. Britain's grid bottlenecks still add to bills here: about £92 a year per household, £4.1m across the constituency's 44,309 homes.

Not visible
here

No big wind farm on the national grid is mapped to this constituency, so no switch-off payments show here in national data. Smaller wind farms on the local grid can still be paid to switch off — invisibly. The £ figure for this seat is a floor, not a zero.

how we worked this out

3.4 MW

of clean power — all solar — approved and still not built, enough to supply a year's electricity to 1,200 homes. Approved at least two years ago; waiting on the grid, not on planning.

5 projects · planning database (REPD), July 2026 · how we worked this out

£4.1m

is what the grid gap costs this constituency's 44,309 households in a year between them — £92 each, about 51 days of one home's electricity.

The £92 per household is a national figure — identical in every GB seat. Only the seat total varies, with the number of households · NESO · how we worked this out

The waiting list

5 of 5 waiting projects · years since approval

Albany Road - Solar Array 2 MW

4.6 YRS

Queen Elizabeth Avenue, Sheriff Hill - Solar Arrays 0.5 MW

4.3 YRS

Riverdale Paper, Earlsway - Solar Panels 0.2 MW

3.7 YRS

Metrocentre Green Car Park, St Michaels Way - Photovoltaic Equipment

3.6 YRS

Metrocentre, St Michaels Way - Solar Panels 0.7 MW

2.9 YRS

Every approved, unbuilt project

approved 24+ months ago, still not generating · planning database, July 2026

Site	Technology	Enough for	Capacity	Approved	Waiting
Albany Road - Solar Array	Solar Photovoltaics	700 homes	2.0 MW	2021-12	4.6 yrs
Metrocentre, St Michaels Way - Solar Panels	Solar Photovoltaics	300 homes	0.7 MW	2023-08	2.9 yrs
Queen Elizabeth Avenue, Sheriff Hill - Solar Arrays	Solar Photovoltaics	200 homes	0.5 MW	2022-04	4.3 yrs
Riverdale Paper, Earlsway - Solar Panels	Solar Photovoltaics	100 homes	0.2 MW	2022-11	3.7 yrs
Metrocentre Green Car Park, St Michaels Way - Photovoltaic Equipment	Solar Photovoltaics	—	— MW	2023-01	3.6 yrs

Plus 2 more approved within the last two years.

What this page does not show

Smaller wind farms on the local grid are also switched off; national data does not show it, so the £ figure here is a floor, not a zero. Offshore wind is counted nationally, never per seat. The planning database can run a quarter behind reality.

Electricity does not travel from a particular project to particular houses. Everything generated goes into the national grid and everyone draws from that shared pool, so "enough for X homes" is a way of sizing the electricity — not a claim that these homes would be powered by this site. Battery storage is counted separately from generation: it moves power in time rather than making it.

Planning statuses come from the government's planning database (REPD), which records what was decided and when, but not why. Where a project was refused we say so and name the authority; for the reasons, look up the planning reference on that council's own register. How to check any figure on this page →

Read the full method, including everything we cannot see →

What has Mark Ferguson said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →

See the full league table Data (JSON)