Labour MP for East Thanet Polly Billington has taken the Head of the government’s Clean Energy Mission Control to task over the Sea Link project to be built at Minster Marshes in a fiery parliamentary exchange.
The planned Sea Link project by National Grid is for a 2 gigawatt (GW) high voltage direct current (HVDC) cable between Suffolk and Thanet.
The plans include a 28-metre high, 90,000 square metre onshore converter station at Minster marshes in the Stour Valley and a takeover of land at the former hoverport during the construction phase.
The proposed £1.1 billion high-voltage subsea cable project, designed to strengthen the UK’s electricity grid, will have cables making landfall at two highly sensitive locations: RSPB’s North Warren Nature Reserve in Suffolk and Kent Wildlife Trust’s Sandwich and Pegwell Bay National Nature Reserve. Both sites sit within landscapes of multiple national and international conservation designations.
‘Destroy a seal colony’
Sitting on the parliamentary committee tasked with scrutinising the government’s plans to deliver clean power by 2030 and bring down energy bills, Polly Billington MP said that she was yet to see evidence that the impact on nature and the local community in East Thanet was being properly considered in the delivery of Sea Link.
She told Ben Golding, Director of the Clean Power Unit at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, that Thanet residents would be affected “without any clear and direct benefits to the community in terms of either ownership or direct support for energy transition.”
She said instead residents are told: “You get a load of kit, it’s gonna be really ugly, we’re gonna build it on a nature reserve, destroy a seal colony (and) threaten significant amounts of natural environment which could indeed be helping to mitigate against climate change. But don’t worry, you’ll get a bit off your bills at some point in the future.”
Opposition
The scheme has been vehemently opposed by campaign group Save Minster Marshes and Kent Wildlife Trust, as well as the district’s two MPs.
It is currently in the Examination Stage of the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP) process, meaning the Planning Inspectorate is reviewing the application and holding hearings before a decision is made on whether a development consent order should be granted.
‘Irony’
Ms Billington told the committee: “The fact that [Sea Link] is going to damage nature when supposedly part of the purpose of tackling climate change is for us to protect nature (is) an irony that seems to be lost on the department.
“And there is no obligation at the moment… for there to be some nature positive obligations around these projects, which actually mitigates against any support that you might get from the community which loves their natural environment.
“Then on top of that, there is no obligation… for the developers of these pieces of infrastructure to support the community that is going to be host to this to get any direct benefit from the energy infrastructure that they are putting in.
“In Victorian times, it was poor people that put up with the consequences of fossil fuel dirty pollution. Now, I don’t want it to be the situation where communities, simply because we are rich in the resources of renewable energy for whatever reason, that end up being told to suck it up.”
The Labour MP has consistently said she thinks National Grid needs to reconsider the project, particularly its impact on nature and the local community.
Mr Golding agreed that there were some ‘real difficulties’ with the impact of projects and the processes around them.
He added: “One of the things we are really keen to do is make sure these things have an actual, overall nature positive impact, They can if they are built in the right way.”
Speakers at DCO hearings last year turned out to share their concerns and opposition to the plans which campaigners and residents say will blight areas of significantly important nature and wildlife.
They also spoke of concerns about the disruption of years of construction work on residents and tourism, the marine environment and the industrialisation of important wildlife sites and the impact on farmers close to the proposed converter site.
National Grid needs a Development Consent Order granted to go ahead with the Sea Link scheme.
When the Examination has concluded, the Planning Inspectorate will write a report on their findings, including a recommendation regarding whether or not to grant a DCO for the project.
This report will go to the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero within three months of the Examination closing.
The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero has the final say on whether to grant or refuse development consent. They must make a decision within three months of receiving the Recommendation.
Once a decision has been made, there is a six week period in which anybody can legally challenge the Secretary of State’s decision. If a challenge is made, the High Court will decide if there are grounds for the decision to be judicially reviewed.
Currently people can register to give their views on National Grid’s plan to compulsory purchase a wider area of the old hoverport site to use for construction, operations and maintenance (O&M) activities.
A spokesperson for National Grid said: “We understand how important Pegwell Bay is to the local community and to wildlife. Our request to extend the access area is to protect the saltmarsh which has expanded further than previously recorded.
“By making this change we can avoid disturbing sensitive habitat and species. We are not proposing work on the saltmarsh and we will provide further updates to the Planning Inspectorate to support this. #.
“Sea Link will play a vital role in bringing clean, secure and more affordable energy to people in Kent and beyond, and we are determined to deliver it with care for the local environment.”
To have your say register by Monday 19th January at https://national-infrastructure-consenting.planninginspectorate.gov.uk/projects/EN020026/register/register-have-your-say
So DFL Billington is jumping on this bandwagon just to get a photo opportunity, is she? Britain has large energy resources and this would help make us self sufficient from fossil fuels! According to Burke’s law(sic) “The first duty of parliament is to do what they think in their faithful and disinterested judgement is right and necessary for the honour and safety of Great Britain”. So, why isn’t she acting in the national interest?
Precisely!
The very fact that the hoverport site has naturally “rewilded” tells everyone how long/short it will take Nature to recolonise post-installlion installation anyway. The same as it is with the earlier cable.
The difference is that Project Nemo involved digging a trench across the foreshadowing to accommodate the cable. And it’s true: the wild life have recovered.
But this project involves building an enormous structure on pristine marshland, an SSSI.
I know PollyB get behind this campaign pretty late in the day but her support and understanding has to be very welcome.
The plans by National Grid are not going to help energy security because the power will be sold to the highest bidder, NG are a private concern not a public service.
That said an off-shore facility or one on existing industrial land is perfectly possible but a bit more expensive.
Also, NG criteria for these protests excludes land liable to flooding and marshland – so why have they chosen Pegwell?
Nature can resurface and colonuse but this project will last 35 years assuming floods and marsh don’t inundate it before.
NG claim they will mitigate losses to flora, fauna and habitats but even they know you can’t just create something out if a hat, it takes decades.
On top of this neither NG or Councils have addressed the toxic effects of a lithium battery fire from this site. 2025 had ten such fires according to the International recording agency, two of these in England.
Lasty, no one, except the Green Pty Cllr’s as far as I can see, are demanding that energy use needs to be lower by investing in using current tech like insulation, water capture, solar panels on all new construction, utilising empty properties for housing rather than new builds, etc, etc.
I’d be more inclined to vote Green if they campaigned more for better cycling and walking facilities, as countries like Holland, Belgium and parts of France do.
The man in the video has extremely small hands, this is most concerning.
Polly Billington and all those who are arguing against the destruction of the Minster marshes and the Pegwell Bay areas concerned are absolutely right.
Just compulsory purchase the airport and build it there.
You wouldn’t even need the whole site.
Just a corner somewhere.
And you could build the S&R helipad on the roof of the converter building.
Correct!
We are not talking about energy generation by tidal, wind or wave. Linking power in East Anglia and Kent seems a very marginal thing at the very least. It will not create any long term jobs and will wreck another wildlife site. Minster Marshes are worth saving!
Ramsgate Port is the ideal location.
Totally agree with you Peter. A ferry service is obviously not going to happen, and far better use it for that than a traveller’s site.
And they won’t have to dig up land to put cables in!
This is terrible it has to be stopped they will kill all wildlife and seals and natural reserves do it somewhere else leave the land to tge future of nature before isxone giant powerstation dreadful
Bravo Polly. Nature is not something you can destroy then ‘switch on again’ Like the farmland they are obsessed with destroying across Thanet, when it gone it gone. Those trying to save it are trying to save it for all
Thanks for trying Polly. Hope you win the argument.
No, I don’t agree with Polly, but I also don’t think much of the local misogynists either.
Minimise the land take but build the facility. What are the alternatives? Someone, anyone, suggest somewhere that won’t be opposed.
It’s virtually impossible to make an unopposed suggestion.
But Manston would do. It wouldn’t need much of the hundreds of acres of the site, and wouldn’t impact on aviation, in the unlikely event it ever returned.
It would be visable from almost every village in Thanet. If Manston isn’t going to be an airport, then it should be returned as farmland – as agreed in 1916.
I never knew that you were around in 1916.In any case like the Sykes- Picot agreement I think it would be a hostage to fortune. I can’t see RSP restoring anything to farmland,and aa the ground would be so polluted as to rule out an agricultural use.
But yes the battery farm and terminal facility could go there but it still requires an entry point, what about Birchington?
Far from the infrastructure impinging on the villages, I think it might be the other way round with the sort of low grade housing designs built nowadays.
I’m a historian… and it would be perfect for a Thanet Earth type farm.
Manston cargo airfield, and this seabed disaster…plus a bit of Reform in the mix.
Only a nuclear waste facility would make Thanet more toxic.
Toxic Avenger – don’t be a silly boy and think before you post – the will of he people decide elections so if it’s Reform so be it – as for your assertion they would be toxic, they cannot be any worst that the current elected clowns. How the situation at Pegwell etc has reached this stage is a worry as it’s so late in the day.