High Court judge overturns consent for Norfolk Vanguard offshore windfarm

A High Court judge has overturned the decision last year by then business and energy secretary, Alok Sharma, to award a development consent order for the 1.8GW Norfolk Vanguard offshore windfarm being developed by Vattenfall.

The judge said the secretary of state had acted unlawfully by failing to provide adequate justification for declining to consider the cumulative impacts of the onshore infrastructure for Norfolk Vanguard and its 1.8GW sister project, Norfolk Boreas, when granting planning permission for the former.

Vattenfall proposed to co-locate the infrastructure for the windfarms, with high voltage direct current cables making landfall at Happisburgh before travelling 60 kilometres to two substations on the same site near the village of Necton. The development consent order for Vanguard covered some enabling works for Boreas, including the installation of ducts along the cable route and modifications to overheard power lines.

Based on the “limited” information available, Sharma opted to defer the evaluation of the combined impacts of the infrastructure until a decision was made on a development consent order for Boreas.

However, Raymond Pearce, the claimant in the case who lives near to the proposed cable route, argued this was irrational given that the same type and amount of information was available for both.

In his ruling, Justice Holgate said the Examining Authority appointed by the Planning Inspectorate and the secretary of state had “not given any clue” as to why they considered the information available on Boreas to be limited, nor had they requested additional information from Vattenfall.

He said they had decided against assessing the cumulative impacts of the infrastructure “without the point being discussed publicly during the examination process” and on the basis of reasoning which, “even on a generous view, could only be described as cursory”.

In line with the arguments presented by the claimant, the judge noted that the decision to grant a development consent order (DCO) for Vanguard would provide a “foot in the door”, making it easier to secure a similar decision for Boreas.

He said although there was no evidence that Vattenfall had deliberately sought this outcome, the developer had understandably “relied heavily” on this “precedent effect” in seeking planning permission for Boreas.

“If the cumulative impacts in the Necton area had been evaluated when considering the application for the Vanguard DCO, one possible outcome is that they would have been found to be unacceptable,” he remarked.

“That could have led the defendant to decide that Necton was not an appropriate location to provide a grid connection for both projects, as intended by the developer, which would also call into question the appropriateness of the co-located cable corridor leading to that connection point.”

He continued: “In that way the promoter could reapply or modify or even abandon its strategic co-locational approach before proceeding with either project. Here, the decision to leave that issue over to consideration of the DCO for the second project prevented that course from being taken.”

Responding to the ruling, Vattenfall head of market development offshore and UK country manager Danielle Lane, said: “This is a very disappointing outcome, but it relates to the process for granting consent and is not about the merits of our world class Norfolk Vanguard project.

“Planning consent was awarded in July 2020 after Vattenfall fulfilled all the requirements placed on developers. It’s vital that the government now acts to redetermine consent, with regard to the judge’s ruling, as quickly as possible. That way we can continue to invest in the region and remain on track to begin generating low cost, renewable electricity by the late 2020s.

“With the expansion in offshore wind that’s required for the UK to reach net zero by 2050, the planning process needs to be able to address and resolve issues much sooner and avoid the uncertainty about whether projects will proceed even after they have planning approval.”