Infrastructure Planning (Electricity Storage Facilities) Order 2020

Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2020 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her introduction to this SI. I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

Also, until May last year, I was an elected councillor on South Somerset District Council. The Minister may know that South Somerset has invested in electric battery storage both to help to balance its budget and to play its part in helping England and Wales to reach their carbon neutral objectives. South Somerset is running a number of initiatives that could contribute to helping the country reach its carbon-zero targets by 2050.

The draft instrument that we are debating today is clear, as is the Explanatory Memorandum that accompanies it. The Government are changing the regulations so that electricity storage facilities over 50 megawatts do not have to go through the national significant infrastructure projects process, thus avoiding the involvement of the Secretary of State. All electricity storage applications will now go to local planning authorities, regardless of their size. The exception is for pumped hydro schemes, for which the threshold remains at 50 megawatts in England and Scotland.

This is definitely a step in the right direction. Local councillors and planners should be able to make decisions about infrastructure projects in their area. In direct contrast to my comments in the previous debate this afternoon, I congratulate the Government on taking this step to improve local democracy and speed up the process.

However, I want to comment on the timeline for the process that has brought us to this debate. In January 2019, the Government ran a consultation on the treatment of electricity storage. This included retaining the 50-megawatt NSIP threshold as it applied to stand-alone storage projects, at the same time amending the 2008 Planning Act to set a new NSIP threshold for composite projects. The consultation ran until 25 March 2019. As the Minister said, the Government then conducted a follow-up consultation, which ran from 15 October to 10 December 2019. This was a period when the country as a whole had its mind on other things.

In July 2020, the Government published their response to the consultation and introduced two statutory instruments, to come into effect on 14 July 2020, for the proposals to be dealt with under the Town and Country Planning Act in future. We are getting used to the Government laying instruments one day and implementing them 24 hours later but, given that the consultation finished on 10 December last year, a timelier implementation could have been achieved with a bit of forethought. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, referred to slow progress.

Other Peers have mentioned other forms of energy generation and storage but electricity storage is vital to making the best use of renewable energy. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, raised the issue of pylons; I will be interested to hear the response on that.

I note that, when the other place debated this SI, it took precisely 15 minutes to do so, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Salisbury mentioned. Despite there being 13 MPs present, only two spoke, along with a Minister. It would be good if some of our debates took only 13 minutes, although I doubt that the quality of the debate would be very good.

That said, I fully support this SI and welcome the fact that local planning authorities will be able to deal with this issue themselves instead of having to go through the lengthy NSIP process.