Lincolnshire County Council to challenge National Grid over pylon plan

County chiefs are planning to send a formal legal letter to National Grid, requesting evidence to support its claims that building pylons across the county is cheaper than installing an underground cable.

Following a meeting of Lincolnshire County Council's executive on Tuesday morning, leader Martin Hill (Conservative) claimed the firm had previously refused to share figures regarding how it reached that judgement.

A National Grid spokesperson said the capital cost of an onshore underground alternative for its Grimsby to Walpole project - which cuts through south Lincolnshire and has sparked a backlash from campaigners - is approximately £6.5 billion, while an offshore subsea cable would cost around £4.3 billion.

Both options are significantly more expensive than the current pylon plan, which is estimated at £1 billion. However, Coun Hill finds this difficult to believe.

"National Grid and the government are claiming that it is actually cheaper to put all these pylons up than laying a cable on the seabed, which is what they have done to date. Frankly, I don’t believe that," he said.

"I’ve said to National Grid, I hear what you are saying, can we at least see what these figures are, how you came to these calculations? Have you put all these figures into it? And they have refused to give them to us.

"So, we are now at a stage where we are going to write a formal legal letter to them to say, look, this is a very big issue for Lincolnshire; we need you to justify these claims.

"At the moment, they are just making these claims without any evidence to back it up.

"Everybody accepts we have to bring the power in. Everybody believes putting it on the seabed would be better. And just to remind people, most of this power isn’t for Lincolnshire; it’s all going down south where they have high demand."

The council leader also criticised statements from "various Labour politicians," indicating that the plan is going to be approved regardless of opposition, arguing that this is very contrary to the planning process. He explained that, when deciding planning applications, councillors need to be very careful not to pre-determine applications.

Coun Hill added: "I think there is a building issue that once the minister makes a decision, if they have already stated that they’re going to do it anyway, that brings the whole process into question."

During the recent Labour conference, Prime Minister Keir Starmer maintained that plans for pylons would need to go ahead to secure cheaper electricity.

The Conservative county council leader later did not rule out further legal action against National Grid, potentially alongside the council's counterparts in Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk, which he said shared a "common issue" with the plans for more pylons from Norwich to Tilbury, albeit at "different stages in the process".

"I think we are going to have to spend some money looking at legal options because, at the moment, we are just not satisfied that this process is being done properly or legally."

National Grid highlighted that the government's National Policy Statement confirms that overhead lines should be the starting presumption for new electricity networks, except at locations of National Landscape (formerly AONB).

A spokesperson for the firm explained: “At our public consultation earlier this year, we shared costs for the Grimsby to Walpole project. At approximately £6.5bn for an underground cable alternative and £4.3bn for an offshore subsea cable, both are at significantly greater cost than the approximate £1bn cost of the onshore option we are proposing.

“When we are developing new electricity infrastructure projects, we consider all technology options and share them at public consultation. The government and our regulator Ofgem require us to assess our proposals against a range of factors, including value for money to bill payers and impact on the community and environment to ensure they are in line with current planning policy, our licence obligations, and net zero targets.”