Harwich and North Essex
Harwich and North Essex has 21 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 7,600 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, £3.9m across the constituency's 41,997 homes.
Ranks 194 of 650 for clean power approved and not built.
What is stuck, and why
| Project and developer | Tech | Size | Why it is stuck |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ardleigh Road, Little Bromley - Battery Energy StorageLawford Power Limited | Battery | 50 MW | Approved 4 years ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref 21/02070/FUL |
| Land North of Horsley Cross - Solar Farm & Battery Energy StorageMespil Solar Energy | Solar | 34 MW12,000 homes | Waiting 12 months for a planning decisionWho can move it: Tendring Council · planning ref 25/01056/FUL |
| Primrose Hall Solar FarmLow Carbon Limited | Solar | 20 MW7,300 homes | Approved 5 years ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref 20/01384/FUL |
| Boxted - Solar PanelsRES Limited | Solar | 20 MW7,300 homes | Waiting 2.8 years for a planning decisionWho can move it: Colchester Council · planning ref DC/23/05127 |
Plus 2 smaller projects — see the full seat page.
Compared with its neighbours
| Constituency | Approved, not built | Running | Paid to switch off |
|---|---|---|---|
| Harwich and North Essex | 21 MW | 68 MW | not visible |
| Witham | 24 MW | 193 MW | not visible |
| Clacton | 64 MW | 48 MW | not visible |
| Colchester | 0.5 MW | 0 MW | not visible |
| Braintree | 51 MW | 70 MW | not visible |
| South Suffolk | 1 MW | 2.8 MW | not visible |
Clacton next door has 64 MW waiting, more than Harwich and North Essex's 21 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.