No.52 of 650 · approved, not built MP: Dr Allison Gardner (Labour) England

Stoke-on-Trent South

Stoke-on-Trent South has 115 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 42,000 homes. Britain's grid bottlenecks still add to bills here: about £92 a year per household, £3.7m across the constituency's 39,972 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

115 MW

of clean power — all solar — approved and still not built, enough to supply a year's electricity to 42,000 homes — about as many homes as this constituency has. Approved at least two years ago; waiting on the grid, not on planning. That is 8.2× the renewable capacity actually running here.

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

£3.7m

is what the grid gap costs this constituency's 39,972 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

4 of 5 waiting projects · years since approval

Upper Newton Farm (Blythe House) - Solar Farm & Battery Storage 28 MW

3.5 YRS

Totmonslow Farm, Upper Tean - Solar Farm 20 MW

3.0 YRS

Upper Leigh Solar Farm 50 MW

2.3 YRS

Blythe House Farm Extension - Solar Array 17 MW

2.0 YRS

Every approved, unbuilt project

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

Site	Technology	Enough for	Capacity	Approved	Waiting
Upper Leigh Solar Farm	Solar Photovoltaics	18,000 homes	49.9 MW	2024-04	2.3 yrs
Upper Newton Farm (Blythe House) - Solar Farm & Battery Storage	Solar Photovoltaics	10,000 homes	27.7 MW	2023-02	3.5 yrs
Totmonslow Farm, Upper Tean - Solar Farm	Solar Photovoltaics	7,200 homes	19.8 MW	2023-08	3.0 yrs
Blythe House Farm Extension - Solar Array	Solar Photovoltaics	6,000 homes	16.6 MW	2024-07	2.0 yrs
Unit 2, G-park, Whittle Road - Solar Panels	Solar Photovoltaics	300 homes	0.8 MW	2022-08	4.0 yrs

Plus 4 more approved within the last two years.

Batteries

projects of 10 MW and above · planning database, July 2026 · what batteries do →

Site	Size	Status	While discharging
Tean Leys Farm, Tean Leys - Battery Storage	70 MW	in planning	could supply ≈245,000 homes
Upper Newton Farm (Blythe House) - Solar Farm & Battery Storage	30 MW	approved, not built 2023	could supply ≈105,000 homes

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 Dr Allison Gardner said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →

See the full league table Data (JSON)