Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether it is his Department's policy to attribute different weight in different parts of the UK to the impact on communities as determining factor in whether new electrical transmission pylon infrastructure should be via overland pylons or undersea connections.

It is Government policy for any part of Great Britain that overhead lines are the starting presumption for most electricity network developments. This takes account of the fact that undergrounding and the use of offshore subsea cables is significantly more expensive.

However, overhead lines can cause detrimental landscape and visual impacts in particularly sensitive areas. Within the energy National Policy Statements, undergrounding and the use of subsea cables can be considered where the benefits outweigh other considerations. This applies across Great Britain.