Westmorland and Lonsdale
Westmorland and Lonsdale has 5.3 MW of clean power (all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 1,900 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 41,531 homes.
Ranks 258 of 650 for clean power approved and not built.
What is stuck, and why
| Project and developer | Tech | Size | Why it is stuck |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eskrigg End Road, Old Hutton - Battery Energy Storage SystemHarmony MS Limited | Battery | 200 MW | Approved a year ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref 2024/2413/FPA |
| Trainriggs Shap - Solar Farm & Battery StorageAbei Energy Limited | Solar | 37 MW13,000 homes | Refused by Westmorland and Furness Council in 2026Who can move it: Westmorland and Furness Council · planning ref 2024/2358/FPA |
| North James Cropper, Garnett Bridge Road - Solar ArrayEllergreen Hydro | Solar | 3 MW1,100 homes | Approved 3 years ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref SL/2022/1159 |
| Silver Howe, Flusco - Solar Array, Wind Turbines Battery StorageLeisure Resorts | Solar | 1.9 MW700 homes | Approved 3 years ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref 22/0676 |
| Westmorland Motorway Services, Tebay - Solar ArrayWestmorland Family Limited | Solar | 1.2 MW500 homes | Waiting 20 months for a planning decisionWho can move it: Westmorland and Furness Council · planning ref 2024/2187/FPA |
Compared with its neighbours
| Constituency | Approved, not built | Running | Paid to switch off |
|---|---|---|---|
| Westmorland and Lonsdale | 5.3 MW | 26 MW | not visible |
| Richmond and Northallerton | 111 MW | 71 MW | not visible |
| Bishop Auckland | 52 MW | 8 MW | not visible |
| Barrow and Furness | 5.5 MW | 38 MW | not visible |
| Penrith and Solway | 4.7 MW | 92 MW | not visible |
| Morecambe and Lunesdale | 3.5 MW | 30 MW | not visible |
Richmond and Northallerton next door has 111 MW waiting, more than Westmorland and Lonsdale's 5.3 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.