Barrow and Furness
Barrow and Furness has 5.5 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 2,000 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, £4.1m across the constituency's 44,945 homes. There is also 27 MW of wind running here on the local network. If that gets switched off, no national record shows it.
Ranks 256 of 650 for clean power approved and not built.
What is stuck, and why
| Project and developer | Tech | Size | Why it is stuck |
|---|---|---|---|
| Roosecote Power Station, Rampside Road - Battery Energy Storage SystemCentrica Plc | Battery | 50 MW | Applied in 2025, still waiting for a decisionWho can move it: Westmorland and Furness Council · planning ref B03/2025/0281 |
| Cavendish Dock Road - Solar ArrayAssociated British Ports | Solar | 40 MW15,000 homes | Waiting 17 months for a planning decisionWho can move it: Westmorland and Furness Council · planning ref B03/2025/0085 |
| Barrow in Furness - Barrow Green Hydrogen HubCarlton Power | Hydrogen | 35 MW | Approved 3 years ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref B09/2022/0869 |
| Langthwaite FarmREG Windpower (previously Cornwall Light and Power) | Onshore wind | 12 MW10,000 homes | Waiting 14.3 years for a planning decisionWho can move it: Cumberland Council · planning ref 4/12/2182/0F1 |
| Bleabeck - Solar FarmNoventum Power Limited | Solar | 10 MW3,600 homes | Waiting 17 months for a planning decisionWho can move it: Westmorland and Furness Council · planning ref B03/2024/0551 |
| Bleabeck Solar Farm, Lots Road - Solar FarmNoventum Power Limited | Solar | 10 MW3,600 homes | Waiting 17 months for a planning decisionWho can move it: Westmorland and Furness Council · planning ref B03/2024/0551 |
Plus 2 smaller projects — see the full seat page.
Compared with its neighbours
| Constituency | Approved, not built | Running | Paid to switch off |
|---|---|---|---|
| Barrow and Furness | 5.5 MW | 38 MW | not visible |
| Whitehaven and Workington | 1.2 MW | 64 MW | not visible |
| Penrith and Solway | 4.7 MW | 92 MW | not visible |
| Westmorland and Lonsdale | 5.3 MW | 26 MW | not visible |
Barrow and Furness has more approved-and-waiting capacity than any of its neighbouring seats.
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
- 3 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.