Whitehaven and Workington
Whitehaven and Workington has 1.2 MW of clean power (mostly onshore wind) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 1,000 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, £4.0m across the constituency's 42,977 homes. There is also 54 MW of wind running here on the local network. If that gets switched off, no national record shows it.
Ranks 391 of 650 for clean power approved and not built.
What is stuck, and why
| Project and developer | Tech | Size | Why it is stuck |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dean Moor Solar Farm & Battery StorageFirma Energy / IB Vogt | Solar | 150 MW54,000 homes | Approved less than a year ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref EN010155 |
| Woodend And Moor Row, Egremont - Battery Energy StorageJT Energy Storage (Windel Energy) | Battery | 30 MW | Approved less than a year ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref 4/25/2180/0F1 |
| Cleator Energy Storage Facility ExtensionCleator Battery Storage Limited | Battery | 5 MW | Applied in 2026, still waiting for a decisionWho can move it: Cumberland Council · planning ref 4/26/2022/0F1 |
| Chapel Banks, Curwen Road - Solar PanelsMurphy Technologies Limited | Solar | 3.2 MW1,200 homes | Applied in 2026, still waiting for a decisionWho can move it: Cumberland Council · planning ref REJ/2026/0002 |
| New Balance Athletic Shoes, Flimby To Maryport - Wind TurbineNew Balance Athletic Shoes UK Ltd | Onshore wind | 1 MW900 homes | Approved 2 years ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref FUL/2023/0047 |
Compared with its neighbours
| Constituency | Approved, not built | Running | Paid to switch off |
|---|---|---|---|
| Whitehaven and Workington | 1.2 MW | 64 MW | not visible |
| Barrow and Furness | 5.5 MW | 38 MW | not visible |
| Penrith and Solway | 4.7 MW | 92 MW | not visible |
Barrow and Furness next door has 5.5 MW waiting, more than Whitehaven and Workington's 1.2 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.