Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard
Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard has 76 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 28,000 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 44,211 homes. A 350 MW battery was refused planning here in 2025; while discharging it could have supplied about 1,226,000 homes.
Ranks 90 of 650 for clean power approved and not built.
What is stuck, and why
| Project and developer | Tech | Size | Why it is stuck |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bury Farm, Dickens Lane - Battery Energy Storage SystemRegener8 Power Limited | Battery | 350 MW | Refused by Central Bedfordshire Council in 2025Who can move it: Central Bedfordshire Council · planning ref CB/25/02044/FULL |
| Chalgrave Manor, Luton Road - Solar FarmAton Energy | Solar | 40 MW15,000 homes | Approved 3 years ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref CB/22/04302/FULL |
| Grounds Farm - Solar farmEncavis | Solar | 20 MW7,300 homes | Approved 5 years ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref CB/21/01571/FULL |
| Leighton Road & Hawthorn - Solar PanelsEconergy International Limited | Solar | 20 MW7,300 homes | Approved a year ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref CB/22/04934/FULL |
| Eastern WayArnold White Estates Limited | Solar | 20 MW7,300 homes | Applied in 2026, still waiting for a decisionWho can move it: Central Bedfordshire Council · planning ref CB/26/01392/OUT |
| Trinity Hall Solar FarmEuropean Energy Photovoltaics Limited | Solar | 15 MW5,400 homes | Under constructionWho can move it: the developer · earliest connection 2027 (in construction) · planning ref CB/21/00437/FULL |
| Eastern WayArnold White Estates Limited | Onshore wind | 8.2 MW7,200 homes | Applied in 2026, still waiting for a decisionWho can move it: Central Bedfordshire Council · planning ref CB/26/01392/OUT |
Compared with its neighbours
| Constituency | Approved, not built | Running | Paid to switch off |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard | 76 MW | 13 MW | not visible |
| Buckingham and Bletchley | 130 MW | 60 MW | not visible |
| Aylesbury | 52 MW | 44 MW | not visible |
| Luton South and South Bedfordshire | 4.5 MW | 18 MW | not visible |
| Luton North | 0.7 MW | 0 MW | not visible |
| Mid Bedfordshire | 43 MW | 14 MW | not visible |
Buckingham and Bletchley next door has 130 MW waiting, more than Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard's 76 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
- 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.