Plans to offer energy bill discounts to householders living near new grid infrastructure will require legislation to avoid falling foul of the Supreme Court, a leading environmental lawyer has warned.
The government unveiled plans to compensate homeowners living near to grid infrastructure projects last week alongside its Autumn Statement announcements.
In its official response to the Winser review of transmission network planning, which recommended compensation packages to ease resistance to new grid projects, the government proposed bill discounts of up to £10,000 for individual households and £200,000 for communities.
However, Estelle Dehon, a barrister at Cornerstone chambers, told the House of Commons energy security and net zero committee that introducing the scheme cannot be done through policy alone.
“The Supreme Court has made it clear that as things stand in law any payment to communities of benefits for hosting a wind farm or solar farm cannot as a matter of law be taken into account in the planning balance,” she said. “If Parliament wishes to change that position, it cannot do so by policy, it will have to legislate.
“Nothing unrelated to land use cannot be taken into account in the planning balance,” she said, adding later in the evidence session that this prohibition “certainly” includes direct payments.
Even if legislation is passed to facilitate direct payments of community benefits, it should not be seen as a “silver bullet” for dealing with the difficulties that arise surrounding transmission schemes, Dehon said.
She told the committee that the government should have been more robust in taking forward the National Infrastructure Commission’s (NIC) proposal to review the National Planning Statements (NPSs) every five years.
The government’s response to the NIC’s review of infrastructure planning accepted its recommendation that there should be a stock take of the NPSs every five years but stopped short of saying that this timetable should be enshrined in legislation.
The way that technology in energy is “moving extraordinarily quickly” means that five yearly reviews are required, Dehon said.
She also expressed disquiet about moves to enable developers to shoulder the costs of cash-strapped statutory consultees in the infrastructure planning process, like the government’s environmental agencies, on the grounds that this public interest role should be “wholly paid” for in this way.
Dehon also told the committee that proximity to grid connections must be given greater weight when weighing up applications for battery and solar schemes in order to cut down debate about whether alternative sites should be considered in the planning process.
And she dismissed concerns that the spread of solar generation will erode the UK’s food security on the grounds that the schemes in the pipeline would only make a small dent in the country’s supply of good quality agricultural land.
“It is absolutely clear that greatest challenge to food security is the impact of climate change and it is clear that solar will have very little impact on food security.”
Robbie Owen, board secretary of the National Infrastructure Planning Association, said the five yearly reviews of the NPSs should be undertaken in tandem with those of the National Infrastructure Assessments, which follow this time scale.
He also said beefing up of support for the NPSs in the National Planning Policy Framework, which guides how councils and inspectors determine applications.
And Owen said the Scottish planning system for grid infrastructure needs to be strengthened because it has not been tested for around a decade and a “major” set of new applications is in the pipeline.