No.186 of 650 · approved, not built MP: Priti Patel (Conservative) England

Witham

Witham has 24 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 8,600 homes. Britain's grid bottlenecks still add to bills here: about £92 a year per household, £3.9m across the constituency's 42,668 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

24 MW

of clean power — all solar — approved and still not built, enough to supply a year's electricity to 8,600 homes. Approved at least two years ago; waiting on the grid, not on planning. That is 0.1× the renewable capacity actually running here.

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

£3.9m

is what the grid gap costs this constituency's 42,668 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 6 waiting projects · years since approval

Church Road Tesco 0.2 MW

6.7 YRS

Motus Trucks and Vans, Griggs Way - Solar PV Panels 0.3 MW

3.5 YRS

Howbridge Junior School, Dengie Close - Solar Panels 0.2 MW

3.0 YRS

The Essex Golf/Leisure Club, The Airfield Earls - Solar Panels 0.2 MW

2.8 YRS

Park Road - Solar Farm 22 MW

2.6 YRS

Cego Limited, Crittall Road - Solar Panels 0.2 MW

2.3 YRS

Every approved, unbuilt project

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

Site	Technology	Enough for	Capacity	Approved	Waiting
Park Road - Solar Farm	Solar Photovoltaics	8,200 homes	22.5 MW	2023-12	2.6 yrs
Motus Trucks and Vans, Griggs Way - Solar PV Panels	Solar Photovoltaics	100 homes	0.3 MW	2023-02	3.5 yrs
The Essex Golf/Leisure Club, The Airfield Earls - Solar Panels	Solar Photovoltaics	100 homes	0.2 MW	2023-10	2.8 yrs
Church Road Tesco	Solar Photovoltaics	100 homes	0.2 MW	2019-11	6.7 yrs
Cego Limited, Crittall Road - Solar Panels	Solar Photovoltaics	100 homes	0.2 MW	2024-04	2.3 yrs
Howbridge Junior School, Dengie Close - Solar Panels	Solar Photovoltaics	100 homes	0.2 MW	2023-08	3.0 yrs

Plus 3 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
Kentish Farm 2 - Battery Energy Storage	22 MW	in planning	could supply ≈79,000 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 Priti Patel said about the grid in Parliament? Search Hansard →

See the full league table Data (JSON)