South Leicestershire
South Leicestershire has 125 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 45,000 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, £3.9m across the constituency's 42,391 homes. There is also 30 MW of wind running here on the local network. If that gets switched off, no national record shows it.
Ranks 47 of 650 for clean power approved and not built.
What is stuck, and why
| Project and developer | Tech | Size | Why it is stuck |
|---|---|---|---|
| Swinford Energy Park - Energy Park Facility & Battery StorageNatPower UK | Battery | 1,000 MW | Applied in 2025, still waiting for a decisionWho can move it: Harborough Council · planning ref 25/00550/OUT |
| Normanton Energy Reserve - Battery StorageExagen SPVO2 Limited | Battery | 500 MW | Approved 3 years ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref 22/1204/FUL |
| Soars Lodge Farm, Foston Lane - Solar FarmSoars Solar Limited | Solar | 50 MW18,000 homes | Approved less than a year ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref 24/0734/FUL |
| Desford Road, ThurlastonElgin Energy EsCo | Solar | 40 MW15,000 homes | Approved 8 years ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref 18/0242/FUL |
| Hinckley Road - Solar FarmCapital Dynamics Limited | Solar | 40 MW15,000 homes | Approved 3 years ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref 21/01242/FUL |
| Lychgate Lane, Aston Flamville - Solar FarmElgin Energy ES Co Limited | Solar | 20 MW7,300 homes | Under constructionWho can move it: the developer · earliest connection 2027 (in construction) · planning ref 22/0048/FUL |
| Hill Farm - Solar ParkHill Farm Solar Ltd | Solar | 20 MW7,300 homes | Waiting 4.7 years for a planning decisionWho can move it: Blaby Council · planning ref 21/1386/FUL |
| Swinford Wind FarmVattenfall | Solar | 20 MW7,300 homes | Under constructionWho can move it: the developer · earliest connection 2027 (in construction) · planning ref 19/01853/FUL |
Plus 1 smaller projects — see the full seat page.
Compared with its neighbours
| Constituency | Approved, not built | Running | Paid to switch off |
|---|---|---|---|
| South Leicestershire | 125 MW | 56 MW | not visible |
| Hinckley and Bosworth | 80 MW | 30 MW | not visible |
| Daventry | 130 MW | 77 MW | not visible |
| Rugby | 77 MW | 25 MW | not visible |
| Harborough, Oadby and Wigston | 0.2 MW | 8.7 MW | not visible |
| Leicester South | 0.3 MW | 0 MW | not visible |
Daventry next door has 130 MW waiting, more than South Leicestershire's 125 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.