Consultation and next steps
Our public consultation, which ran between Thursday 28 October and Thursday 9 December 2021, is now closed to the public.
During the first stage of consultation, which was held between Thursday 11 March and Thursday 15 April 2021, we received feedback from a wide range of stakeholder and identified several key themes from the feedback. These are set about below along with information how we have taken them into account as we have developed our proposals.
In line with Section 49 (2) of the Planning Act 2008, feedback received through consultation must be considered with respect to the project design, prior to submitting a DCO application to the Planning Inspectorate for examination.
Further design work has been undertaken following this initial round of feedback resulting in the proposals that we are currently consulting on. You can see how we have taken feedback into account and helped us further refine the project design in our in our non-statutory consultation report.
Our statutory consultation provided all stakeholders with the opportunity to comment, including those with statutory interests, businesses, local communities, individual residents and affected landowners, as well as those who work or transit through the local area.
Since our statutory consultation, the feedback that was received has been taken into account alongside further design work. A targeted localised consultation and additional landowners consultation is now being undertaken where minor amends are proposed for the Project.
The feedback from these additional consultations will be included in a Consultation Report that will summarise all of the feedback we received and outline how the non-statutory, statutory, additional landowner and targeted localised consultations were undertaken. The Yorkshire GREEN Development Consent Order (DCO) application will be examined by a panel of Planning Inspectors who will make a recommendation on the application to the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
Certain types of energy infrastructure are classified as Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs), which require a Development Consent Order (DCO) under the Planning Act 2008.
For National Grid, NSIPs include new overhead lines and pipelines over a certain voltage and length. Applications for DCOs are submitted to and examined by the Planning Inspectorate and are determined by the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), not by a local planning authority. The Yorkshire GREEN Project falls into this category.
We held our first round of public consultation in March and April 2021. This helped us identify potential areas of concern, allowed us to consider and respond to feedback, and the consultation responses received informed the refinement of the Project design. A Non-statutory Consultation Response Report has been prepared which summarises the consultation comments we received at the non-statutory consultation, and provides a response to the comments.
We are now presenting our more detailed proposals during this statutory consultation. Our design has
been refined following your feedback from our non-statutory consultation, together with information from further environmental and technical work. This is your opportunity to have your say before we submit our DCO application to the Planning Inspectorate in winter 2022/23.
We are consulting with prescribed consultees, such as the Environment Agency, Natural England and Historic England, as well as landowners, local businesses, elected representatives, residents, communities and organisations and interest groups such as local wildlife trusts and the RSPB.
Ahead of our consultation we have reached out to hard-to-reach groups, including younger people, time-constrained people, and those identified in discussions with local authorities. We will continue to do this during the consultation
We will produce and publish a Consultation Report that will summarise all of the feedback we received and outline how the non-statutory, statutory, additional landowner and targeted localised consultations were undertaken.
This feedback, together with information from further environmental and technical work, will inform our project design and shape the Yorkshire GREEN Development Consent Order (DCO) application, which we plan to submit to the Planning Inspectorate in winter 2022/23.
An overview of the DCO process and the key stages for Yorkshire GREEN is presented in the animation below: