Lincolnshire County Council has submitted a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to National Grid, asking the company to justify its claims that building pylons across the county is cheaper than installing an underground cable.
It has almost been a year since National Grid first announced its plan to build an 87-mile line of electricity pylons stretching from Grimsby to Walpole in Norfolk. This has led to threats of legal action and a petition from concerned locals, which has surpassed 8,000 signatures, writes Local Democracy Reporter James Turner.
The company previously outlined that the cost for an onshore underground alternative to the pylons is approximately £6.5 billion, while an offshore subsea cable would cost £4.3 billion. Both options are significantly more expensive than the current pylon plan, which is estimated at £1 billion.
Coun Martin Hill (pictured), leader of Lincolnshire County Council, previously wrote to the firm, alongside representatives from county councils in Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk, who are battling similar pylon plans as he did not believe them. However, he says he never heard back from them.
Coun Hill still feels the situation “doesn’t make sense”.
“We have asked them how they arrived at these figures so we can offer a sensible report, but so far they have refused,” he said, following a full council meeting.
“It surely can’t be right that they want to put all of the pylons up, but they’re not prepared to tell us what the justification is for not putting the cables underneath the seabed.”
Executive members threatened legal action over the plans during discussions in March. They argued that not only did it seem National Grid was not giving enough consideration to alternatives, but that the proposed pylons would threaten Lincolnshire’s landscape.
Coun Hill noted that a decision on the proposal is likely to be made in summer 2025.
A spokesman for National Grid insisted that the Grimsby to Walpole project is urgently needed to meet the government’s decarbonisation ambitions.
They responded: “We shared published costs for the Grimsby to Walpole project with stakeholders and at public consultation, earlier this year.
“We are confident that the processes we follow to identify and assess potential strategic options and cost are robust, and the most appropriate.
“This has been tried and tested through numerous previous projects, the formal examination process, and ultimately the decision will be made by the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero.”
