Barnsley North
Barnsley North has 5.1 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 1,800 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, £4.2m across the constituency's 45,993 homes.
Ranks 262 of 650 for clean power approved and not built.
What is stuck, and why
| Project and developer | Tech | Size | Why it is stuck |
|---|---|---|---|
| Engine Lane, Grimethorpe - Solar FarmEnviromena | Solar | 50 MW18,000 homes | Waiting 18 months for a planning decisionWho can move it: Barnsley Council · planning ref 2024/1096 |
| Park Springs, Long Royd - Solar PanelsLeggett & Platt Barnsley | Solar | 3.1 MW1,100 homes | Approved 2 years ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref 2024/0087 |
| Lundwood, Sewage Works - Solar ArrayDowning Energy Development Company Limited | Solar | 1.3 MW500 homes | Approved 3 years ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref 2023/0515 |
Compared with its neighbours
| Constituency | Approved, not built | Running | Paid to switch off |
|---|---|---|---|
| Barnsley North | 5.1 MW | 11 MW | not visible |
| Penistone and Stocksbridge | 0 MW | 26 MW | not visible |
| Barnsley South | 0.5 MW | 1.7 MW | not visible |
| Ossett and Denby Dale | 52 MW | 0 MW | not visible |
| Normanton and Hemsworth | 3.7 MW | 2.4 MW | not visible |
| Doncaster North | 3.8 MW | 21 MW | not visible |
Ossett and Denby Dale next door has 52 MW waiting, more than Barnsley North's 5.1 MW.
The rest of the briefing
- Every approval each project still needs, and which of them the public can see
- What building them would mean here — community payments, business rates and construction work
- Drafted parliamentary questions and letters, filled in with this seat's figures
- 2 story angles for local reporting
- A two-page PDF, and a newsroom edition with the references and who to call
Everything above needs no account, and neither does the full seat page, the method or this constituency's raw data. The account covers the packaged briefing and its PDF, and nothing else.