Washington and Gateshead South
Washington and Gateshead South has 26 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 9,300 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 41,894 homes. A 71 MW battery was refused planning here in 2026; while discharging it could have supplied about 249,000 homes.
Ranks 181 of 650 for clean power approved and not built.
What is stuck, and why
| Project and developer | Tech | Size | Why it is stuck |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mary Avenue, Birtley - Battery Energy StorageFig Power | Battery | 71 MW | Refused by Gateshead Council in 2026Who can move it: Gateshead Council · planning ref DC/24/00258/FUL |
| Usworth House Farm, Peareth Hall Road - Solar FarmBoom Developments Limited | Solar | 27 MW9,900 homes | Refused by Sunderland Council in 2025Who can move it: Sunderland Council · planning ref 22/02803/FU4 |
| Washington Road - Solar FarmEngerera Renewables 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 21/02381/FUL |
| Komatsu UK, Durham Road - Solar PanelsKomatsu UK Limited | Solar | 1.8 MW600 homes | Approved a year ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref DC/24/00924/NPA |
| Rolls Royce Plc, Radial Park Road - Solar PanelsRolls Royce | Solar | 1.6 MW600 homes | Approved a year ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref 24/02058/PCZ |
| Snop, Rainhill Road - Solar PanelsSLIPIT | Solar | 1.2 MW500 homes | Approved 4 years ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref 22/02042/FUL |
Plus 2 smaller projects — see the full seat page.
Compared with its neighbours
| Constituency | Approved, not built | Running | Paid to switch off |
|---|---|---|---|
| Washington and Gateshead South | 26 MW | 16 MW | not visible |
| North Durham | 0.9 MW | 28 MW | not visible |
| Houghton and Sunderland South | 2.4 MW | 11 MW | not visible |
| Sunderland Central | 1.1 MW | 0 MW | not visible |
| Gateshead Central and Whickham | 3.4 MW | 0 MW | not visible |
| Jarrow and Gateshead East | 5 MW | 0 MW | not visible |
Washington and Gateshead South 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.