No.280 of 650 · approved, not built MP: Dame Chi Onwurah (Labour) England

Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West

Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West has 3.7 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 1,400 homes. Britain's grid bottlenecks still add to bills here: about £92 a year per household, £4.7m across the constituency's 51,338 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.
3.7 MW
of clean power — all solar — approved and still not built, enough to supply a year's electricity to 1,400 homes. Approved at least two years ago; waiting on the grid, not on planning.
13 projects · planning database (REPD), July 2026 · how we worked this out
£4.7m
is what the grid gap costs this constituency's 51,338 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

6 of 13 waiting projects · years since approval
Canning Street Primary School - Photovoltaic Panels
5.1 YRS
Dame Margaret Barbour Building - Photovoltaic panels 0.2 MW
5.0 YRS
West Road - Solar Photovoltaic Panels 0.2 MW
4.9 YRS
West Denton Leisure Centre - Photovoltaic Panels 0.2 MW
4.9 YRS
Stamfordham Road - Solar Panels 0.2 MW
4.8 YRS
Newcastle University, Robinson Library - Solar Panels 0.2 MW
4.4 YRS

Every approved, unbuilt project

approved 24+ months ago, still not generating · planning database, July 2026
SiteTechnologyEnough forCapacityApprovedWaiting
Newcastle University Sports Centre - Solar Photovoltaic PanelsSolar Photovoltaics200 homes0.6 MW2023-073.1 yrs
Newcastle University, Boiler House - Roof Mounted Photovoltaic PanelsSolar Photovoltaics200 homes0.6 MW2023-083.0 yrs
Excelsior Academy, Denton Road - Solar PanelsSolar Photovoltaics200 homes0.5 MW2023-082.9 yrs
Sanderson Street - Photovoltaic panelsSolar Photovoltaics200 homes0.5 MW2023-122.7 yrs
West Road - Solar Photovoltaic PanelsSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.2 MW2021-094.9 yrs
Paradise Works, Scotswood Road - Photovoltaic PanelsSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.2 MW2023-043.3 yrs
Hadrian School, Bertram Crescent - Solar PanelsSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.2 MW2023-082.9 yrs
West Denton Leisure Centre - Photovoltaic PanelsSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.2 MW2021-094.9 yrs
Newcastle University, Robinson Library - Solar PanelsSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.2 MW2022-034.4 yrs
Dame Margaret Barbour Building - Photovoltaic panelsSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.2 MW2021-085.0 yrs
Stamfordham Road - Solar PanelsSolar Photovoltaics100 homes0.2 MW2021-104.8 yrs
Canning Street Primary School - Photovoltaic PanelsSolar Photovoltaics— MW2021-065.1 yrs
Students Union Building - Solar Photovoltaic PanelsSolar Photovoltaics— MW2022-044.3 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 Dame Chi Onwurah said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →

See the full league table Data (JSON)