Infrastructure Planning Blog

This week's entry examines the latest DCO decision on the Tillbridge Solar Project, the government's view on the Marine Recovery Fund, and recent amendments to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill relating to the Planning Act 2008 regime.

Tillbridge Solar

On 14 October, the due date, the Secretary of State (SoS) for Energy Security and Net Zero approved the Tillbridge Solar Project. The project is a proposed 500MW solar farm to the east of Gainsborough in Lincolnshire (or possibly 700MB, the largest in the UK, according to the Guardian), with its substation connection over the Trent in Nottinghamshire, not that far from our old friends West Burton, Cottam and Gate Burton. The two-inspector examining authority also recommended approval. Cumulative effects with the other solar farms get a succinct mention at paragraph 7.7 of the Decision Letter.

The DCO commits to 64% area, 17% hedgerow and 23% watercourse biodiversity net gain, all inserted by the SoS - the previous version just required approval with a biodiversity net gain strategy. If the metric is withdrawn or replaced then it's up to the local authority to approve what to use instead. Natural England got added as a consultee to six requirements.

A historic Viking Winter Camp was treated as equivalent to a Scheduled Ancient Monument even though it isn't one and the other three nearby solar DCOs didn't treat it as such. Heritage got moderate negative weight and landscape and visual got great negative weight, as is typical for large solar farms.

Agricultural land got less coverage than the three nearby projects – but then it involved less coverage: fewer than 2% of the panels covered land of classification 3a and none 1 or 2. Similarly, there was less concern than before about the associated battery energy and storage system (BESS) which was not mentioned in the decision letter once first identified as part of the project. Are we getting more habituated to these solar farms?

There was, though, some to-ing and fro-ing in the recommendation report on whether the BESS could be classified as “associated development”. The examining authority (ExA) concluded that the BESS units did meet the tests of being a subordinate to the ‘primary’ development, and that whilst the BESS would provide “various functions which we do not consider to be primarily related to the principal development”, overall it would support the NSIP element.

Overplanting was once again mentioned (previously covered in Blog 5), but ultimately the ExA concluded that the applicant had justified the level of overplanting, noting that “The primary benefit of overplanting when coupled with BESS provision is that it ensures that the grid connection is maximised by reducing the amount of energy which would otherwise be lost during times of peak generation”.

Marine Recovery Fund

Earlier this year, Defra consulted on setting up a Marine Recovery Fund (MRF), which would be paid in by offshore windfarm developers. The money would be used for strategic compensation for their projects, e.g. for bird strike. The fund is established by the Energy Act 2023 (section 292, if you really want to know).

On 13 October Defra responded to the consultation responses, here, and what follows is a brief summary.

The government will require projects to comply with Offshore Wind Environmental Standards (OWES) to be allowed to use the fund. These standards show that the project has followed the mitigation hierarchy, yet still needs compensation. Once the requisite payment had been fully paid to the MRF, the windfarm owner will be off the hook for providing the compensation.

Next steps are the production of secondary legislation and associated guidance; however, no timescales have been given.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

The government's flagship planning bill is nearing the end of its parliamentary journey. It will start its report stage in the House of Lords next week – being the second-last stage there – followed by the reconciliation of the two versions in each House (so-called 'ping-pong').

In the Lords, amendments can be made at this stage and even at the next one (third reading). Indeed, the government tabled 67 amendments to the bill on Monday evening, 13 October, which are those with asterisks tabled by Baroness Taylor of Stevenage in this document.

Here are the highlights of those amendments with relevance to infrastructure planning:

• A technical amendment to allow third parties to promote water projects on the water company's behalf.
• A reversal of the proposed change to the criterion for acceptance of an application - it was going to be 'suitable for examination' but will now stay as the existing 'of a satisfactory standard'.
• If the SoS decides not to accept an application, reasons must be given.
• Natural England will be allowed to refuse to respond to requests for advice to a public authority in some circumstances (this is a separate duty to any under the Planning Act 2008 but may affect DCOs).

These amendments seem pretty minor and are unlikely to make any difference to time, cost and risk in the NSIPs. However, there have been various murmurings that further measures to deal with infrastructure planning – potentially through either a second Planning Bill or a  “Nature Bill” – will come forward , so we can expect to see more on this front. Not least, the Nuclear Taskforce of which our own Mustafa Latif-Aramesh is a member, is due to make recommendations that will no doubt take the debate that much further.  I suggested 40 ways of improving the regime to MHCLG during the pandemic, many of which have been actioned, but I’d be happy to reiterate and update them in the light of the last five years’ experience.

Data centres enter the NSIP world

The Government has laid the statutory instrument which would allow data centre developers to be introduced into the NSIP regime under section 35 of the Planning Act. You can find the simple draft SI here. My colleague and co-author of the blog, Tom McNamara, wrote about what this brave new world looks like here. No doubt we can expect a National Policy Statement for Data Centres in due course.

There has been a judgment in relation to the HyNet carbon capture project, which will be covered next week. Please do subscribe to the blog using the link below if you fancy reading that.

This publication is intended for general guidance and represents our understanding of the relevant law and practice as at October 2025. Specific advice should be sought for specific cases. For more information see our terms & conditions.