North West Cambridgeshire
North West Cambridgeshire has 13 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 4,700 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, £4.3m across the constituency's 46,790 homes.
Ranks 214 of 650 for clean power approved and not built.
What is stuck, and why
| Project and developer | Tech | Size | Why it is stuck |
|---|---|---|---|
| Little Staughton Solar FarmNextpower SPV 12 Limited | Solar | 50 MW18,000 homes | Approved a year ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref 22/01813/FUL |
| Haddon Solar parkWessex Solar Energy | Solar | 22 MW8,000 homes | Refused by Huntingdonshire Council in 2024Who can move it: Huntingdonshire Council · planning ref 22/00668/FUL |
| Wittering Ford Road, Barnack - Solar Photovoltaic FarmLarkfleet limited | Solar | 11 MW4,000 homes | Approved 3 years ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref 23/00829/FUL |
| The Drove, Pondersbridge - Anaerobic Digestion PlantCollmart Growers Limited | Anaerobic Digestion | 6.8 MW | Approved 3 years ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref 22/01107/FUL |
Plus 2 smaller projects — see the full seat page.
Compared with its neighbours
| Constituency | Approved, not built | Running | Paid to switch off |
|---|---|---|---|
| North West Cambridgeshire | 13 MW | 20 MW | not visible |
| Huntingdon | 32 MW | 157 MW | not visible |
| Corby and East Northamptonshire | 52 MW | 5 MW | not visible |
| North East Cambridgeshire | 2.9 MW | 156 MW | not visible |
| Peterborough | 67 MW | 30 MW | not visible |
| South Holland and The Deepings | 130 MW | 113 MW | not visible |
South Holland and The Deepings next door has 130 MW waiting, more than North West Cambridgeshire's 13 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
- 2 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.