LETTERS – Powerful response to pylons plan

A powerful response on behalf of its thousands of supporters was submitted on Wednesday, March 6 by No Pylons Lincolnshire to National Grid’s Grimsby to Walpole Great Grid Upgrade consultation.
It calls National Grid to account on a number of important issues and forcefully makes the point that it absolutely opposes the pylon proposals.
It firstly challenges the consultation process itself and claims the proposals show no understanding of the significant adverse impacts pylons would have on the landscape, environment, heritage, businesses or quality of life of the communities affected.
The official No Pylons Lincolnshire response says the presentation of costings and the consideration of alternative approaches, as presented by National Grid, are based on an excessively narrow definition of value for money, do not follow Treasury Green Book guidelines and ignore all costs other than the capital cost of the proposed works.
“This masks the true full economic costs of the alternative approaches and favours the most intrusive and least appropriate option,” says the response.
“The proposals subject to this consultation are flawed. They ignore the importance of Lincolnshire’s agricultural economy to the food security of the United Kingdom,” it continues.
Lincolnshire produces an eighth of all England’s food, 30 per cent of its fresh produce and 18 per cent of its poultry. Food security is one of the Government’s key priorities, as acknowledged by the Prime Minister. There has been no account taken of the impact of these proposals on farming or food security.
It claims the pylons plan would saddle the county with the cheapest possible infrastructure for the next 50 years.
“We accept the need for additional electricity transmission infrastructure and we support the decarbonisation of electricity generation. But there are alternative approaches which would offer better value for money.”
It is clear from National Grid’s own consultation material that the decision to proceed with the project has already been made, and alternative options such as underground or undersea routes or upgrading existing infrastructure have been discounted.
The current consultation exercise appears to be little more than an administrative fig leaf designed to make a pre-determined outcome appear slightly less offensive.
National Grid’s preferred option appears to have been determined on solely financial grounds.
These deficiencies render the current exercise an insufficient basis on which to enable National Grid properly to conduct the next, statutory, stage of consultation.
The open vistas of the Lincolnshire landscape offer no relief from an 87-mile line of a minimum of 420 50-metre-tall pylons. It is a landscape which cannot stand the intrusion of disproportionately large, industrial structures.
These are judgements which clearly informed the 2012 decision to underground the link from the Triton Knoll wind farm to the Bicker Fen sub-station. If such considerations applied in 2012, it is difficult to understand why NG should now think it acceptable to route 440kV cables over a broadly similar route.
An integrated offshore grid has been demonstrated by National Grid to be technically feasible, better for consumers to the tune of £6bn, to offer environmental and socio-economic benefits and to be more effective the sooner it is started.
We therefore call on National Grid to:

1. engage in a genuine consultation process with the communities of Lincolnshire to identify the best approach to building transmission capacity with the least impact on landscapes, agriculture and socio-economic well-being;
2. engage in such consultation with an open mind, rather than a pre-determined preferred option;
3. support an approach to value-for-money assessment which follows the Treasury Green Book principles and does not simply ignore unmonetised costs and benefits;
4. adopt an integrated approach to transmission capacity development, reflecting the potential benefits of an integrated offshore grid.
   See the full submission at https://nopylons.co.uk/official-objections
   Lincolnshire’s MPs, Lincolnshire County Council, district and parish councils are opposing the pylons plan

No Pylons Lincolnshre