Today Parliament debated the place that pylons should have in National Grid’s upgrades to the UK’s electricity grid.

The debate in Westminster Hall was led by Matt Warman MP, who reiterated to the Minister that whilst an upgrade to the grid and new infrastructure is needed to meet the UK’s energy demands, National Grid’s strategy is incoherent, short-sighted, and does not properly consider the impacts that pylons would have on Lincolnshire’s food security and local economy.

The Grimsby to Walpole project proposes to put up tens of kilometres of pylons and overhead lines up across Lincolnshire, alongside projects in other areas of the country such as Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex. National Grid states that it is the Government’s framework that requires pylons to be used, rather than putting the infrastructure underground or offshore, despite other projects across the country to take pylons down, and replace them with underground lines.

Matt Warman has called for a better approach, that considers what a successful rewiring of the grid would look like in the long term, and urged the Government to consider pausing the current set of conflicting projects, and to look again at the approach to upgrade the grid, taking into better consideration the long term impacts on local communities.

Commenting in the debate today, Matt Warman said:

“My constituents are angry. They are angry with National Grid, and they are angry with the proposals to rewire the grid in such a way that uses Lincolnshire as, what is frankly, a dumping ground for outdated infrastructure, that could be done better and could be done differently.

The way that National Grid has behaved, hasn’t delivered on transparency, and hasn’t made constituents feel that this is a meaningful consultation on proposals that will not be temporary, but will be with us for many years to come and will cost millions of pounds.

I have never had more emails and I have never seen more packed public meetings on any other issue. My constituents don’t deny that there is a real need to upgrade the grid for the future. But they want to see value for money for the taxpayer, they want to see landscapes not unnecessarily blighted, and they want to see an approach that acknowledges that the economic impact and the impact on food security should be the Government’s top priority.

I implore the Minister to take this message back to the Secretary of State loud and clear. That is what in the interest of all our constituents”.

Matt welcomed the high turnout for the debate, with Members of Parliament from all political parties and across the country making it known they too are concerned about the impact that erecting pylons across the countryside would have, and have urged the Government and National Grid to better consider underground and offshore options.