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

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the planned fivefold increase in the target for offshore wind power production by 2030, what plans they have to amend the criteria for assessing the related cumulative impact.

Ensuring environmental protections are maintained is a key component of work being undertaken by Government to facilitate the acceleration of offshore wind. The Energy Bill makes provisions to deliver the Offshore Wind Environmental Improvement Package (OWEIP), which was announced in the British Energy Security Strategy.

The OWEIP will streamline Habitat Regulation Assessments, develop and implement Offshore Wind Environmental Standards, and create a Marine Recovery Fund to enable environmental compensation to be undertaken at a strategic level. This ensures developments are located where there are lower environmental sensitivities, and/or where impacts can be avoided, reduced, mitigated, or if required, compensated.