Coffey: Halt grid connection offers until spatial energy plan in place

Ex-environment secretary Thérèse Coffey has called for a halt to new grid connections being offered until the interim Spatial Strategy Energy Plan (SSEP) is in place.

Coffey, who stepped down from the role of environment secretary of state last November but remains an MP, told the House of Commons that her Suffolk Coastal constituents are being “shafted” by plans to significantly upgrade the transmission network.

As well as hosting the existing Sizewell B and planned Sizewell C nuclear plants, the five square-mile constituency is landfall point for the proposed Lion Link interconnector with the Netherlands and the Sea Link subsea transmission line between Kent and Suffolk.

The combination of generation and transmission adds up to a third of the UK’s entire electricity use being routed through Suffolk Coastal, which contains an area of outstanding natural beauty, Coffey said: “Local people are understandably concerned about the scale of the development that is happening in an area that already has significant environmental protections.”

But during the debate, which was held to give the go ahead for the long awaited energy policy Strategy and Policy Statement (SPS), she raised fears about moves to accelerate the scale and pace of grid development.

“What worries me is that they are accelerating it without necessarily having done the work,” she said. “Communities want certainty. What they do not want is a botched job along the way.”

Coffey welcomed the government’s move to get the National Grid’s Energy System Operator (ESO) to draw up a SSEP.

But expressing fears that the ESO is not taking the SSEP’s more “holistic” approach into account and will “simply plough on” with its plans, she called in the short term for ministers to “direct National Grid and the ESO not to offer any more connections until the interim spatial strategy energy plan is granted.”

The SSEP, which was recommended by networks commissioner in his report to government last year, is designed to offer a blueprint for where energy assets should be developed across the UK.

Coffey also said the SPS must be revised to “make it very clear” that the secretary of state should “ultimately” sign off the SSEP.

Responding on behalf of the government, junior energy minister Amanda Solloway said: “The expertise of an independent NESO will be invaluable in creating the SSEP, but it is important that the plan is underpinned by proper democratic accountability.”