Henley and Thame
Henley and Thame has 151 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 55,000 homes. Britain's grid bottlenecks still add to bills here: about £92 a year per household, £3.6m across the constituency's 39,348 homes. A 100 MW battery was refused planning here in 2025; while discharging it could have supplied about 350,000 homes.
Ranks 31 of 650 for clean power approved and not built.
What is stuck, and why
| Project and developer | Tech | Size | Why it is stuck |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lower road, Garsington - Energy Storage SystemNet Zero Twenty One Ltd | Battery | 100 MW | Refused by South Oxfordshire Council in 2025Who can move it: South Oxfordshire Council · planning ref P24/S3557/FUL |
| Harlesford Solar FarmHarlesford Solar Farm Limited | Solar | 50 MW18,000 homes | Approved 5 years ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref P20/S3245/FUL |
| Cornwell Solar FarmLow Carbon / EDF Energy Renewables | Solar | 50 MW18,000 homes | Approved 5 years ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref P20/S3244/FUL |
| Dodwells Solar FarmOpdenergy UK Limited | Solar | 50 MW18,000 homes | Approved 3 years ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref P21/S3915/FUL |
| Postcombe - Solar ArraySolar 2 Limited | Solar | 50 MW18,000 homes | Waiting 13 months for a planning decisionWho can move it: South Oxfordshire Council · planning ref P25/S1987/FUL |
Plus 2 smaller projects — see the full seat page.
Compared with its neighbours
| Constituency | Approved, not built | Running | Paid to switch off |
|---|---|---|---|
| Henley and Thame | 151 MW | 35 MW | not visible |
| Earley and Woodley | 3.7 MW | 7 MW | not visible |
| Wokingham | 48 MW | 0 MW | not visible |
| Reading West and Mid Berkshire | 32 MW | 22 MW | not visible |
| Reading Central | 0.4 MW | 0 MW | not visible |
| Wycombe | 0.8 MW | 0 MW | not visible |
Henley and Thame 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.