Hexham
Hexham has 23 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 8,200 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, £3.8m across the constituency's 41,294 homes. There is also 50 MW of wind running here on the local network. If that gets switched off, no national record shows it.
Ranks 189 of 650 for clean power approved and not built.
What is stuck, and why
| Project and developer | Tech | Size | Why it is stuck |
|---|---|---|---|
| Newburn BESS - Battery Energy Storage SystemFig Power | Battery | 90 MW | Waiting 2.2 years for a planning decisionWho can move it: Newcastle upon Tyne Council · planning ref 2024/0447/01/DET |
| Fourstones -Battery Energy StorageMespil Solar Energy | Battery | 60 MW | Applied in 2025, still waiting for a decisionWho can move it: Northumberland Council · planning ref 25/02869/RENE |
| Fourstones - Solar ParkMespil Solar Energy | Solar | 50 MW18,000 homes | Applied in 2025, still waiting for a decisionWho can move it: Northumberland Council · planning ref 25/02869/RENE |
| Fourstones Substation, Fourstones - Solar Farm & Battery Energy StorageER New Projects 2 Limited | Solar | 32 MW12,000 homes | Waiting 15 months for a planning decisionWho can move it: Northumberland Council · planning ref 25/01494/RENEIA |
| Newcastle International Airport Phase 3- Solar FarmNewcastle International Airport | Solar | 5 MW1,800 homes | Approved 4 years ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref 2021/1818/01/DET |
Plus 6 smaller projects — see the full seat page.
Compared with its neighbours
| Constituency | Approved, not built | Running | Paid to switch off |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hexham | 23 MW | 56 MW | not visible |
| North Durham | 0.9 MW | 28 MW | not visible |
| Bishop Auckland | 52 MW | 8 MW | not visible |
| Penrith and Solway | 4.7 MW | 92 MW | not visible |
| Carlisle | 70 MW | 49 MW | not visible |
| Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk | 85 MW | 685 MW | £7.0m |
Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk next door has 85 MW waiting, more than Hexham's 23 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.