Alan Nafzger on Steeple Renewables, the Planning Act examination, 183 applications and the quiet drama of a process that finished when it said it would
Saturday 10 October, 1.40pm, the same desk, a plate of toast and a sense that something is wrong, which turns out to be that the news is good and I do not know what to do with it.
Dear Diary. Yesterday, 9 October, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero announced its decision on the Steeple Renewables Project, and the press release is the sort of document that I enjoy more than I should. It reads like a very polite timetable. The page is titled Steeple Renewables Project development consent decision announced, and the substance is that consent has been granted.
The Facts, Plainly
The project is in Nottinghamshire and comprises about 450 megawatts of solar generation and an approximately 150 megawatt battery energy storage system. The applicant is Steeple Solar Farm Limited, which submitted its application on 14 May 2025. The application was accepted for examination on 11 June 2025, and there followed a six-month examination during which the public, statutory consultees and other interested parties could give evidence. The Planning Inspectorate made its recommendation to the Secretary of State on 10 July 2026. The decision, according to the page, was made by Baroness Curran on behalf of the Energy Secretary’s legal authority.
The release makes a point of saying that the Planning Inspectorate completed the examination within the statutory timescale set by the Planning Act 2008, and that this is the 115th energy application out of 183 examined to date. It does not say what conditions are attached to the consent, so I do not either.
The Joy of a Timetable
Forgive an editor his eccentricities. In a country where the word planning is mostly followed by the word nightmare, the sight of a process that did what it said it would do is a small marvel. The dates in the release run like clockwork: May 2025, June 2025, six months of examination, a recommendation in July 2026, a decision in October. It has the lucid, boring beauty of a train that left on time.
I should not overstate it. The release does not tell us whether anyone objected, how the local community felt or what the environmental trade-offs were. It is a government announcement, and governments announce their successes. A fair reader will follow the link to the examination documents and read the evidence. But the narrow point, that the system can produce a decision inside its statutory window, is worth noting in a country that has spent a generation complaining that it cannot.
The Wider Argument
Our archive has long treated British planning with a certain affectionate despair. The essay on the British planning system, where good intentions go to wait eighteen months for a decision is one of the most read pieces on the site, and I would say it holds up, though today it deserves a footnote saying that sometimes the wait is shorter. For the energy context, see the longer study of the British energy crisis, net zero and the politics of not being cold in the dark, which sets the arguments for domestic generation beside the arguments about cost.
And because we are a site that tries not to be one-sided, I should mention the old and thorough scepticism of the whole business. Our piece on how China sold Britain the wind gives the harder-edged view that much of the renewable supply chain is built elsewhere, and that energy independence is a more complicated idea than the slogan suggests. Both views belong in a serious conversation.
What 450 Megawatts Means
I am no engineer, so I will not translate megawatts into homes powered, a calculation that always depends on assumptions the press release does not give. The release does not make that claim, and I will not make it for them. What I will say is that a project of this size, with storage attached, is the sort of infrastructure that the energy debate is actually about, and the arguments about it are real: land use, the grid connection, the local landscape and the cost of power.
The editor in me notes that the debate is rarely conducted on those terms. It is conducted in slogans, on both sides, by people who have never read a development consent order. The document exists, it is public, and the reference on the page is EN010163. If you want to be better informed than the average pundit, read it. It takes an afternoon.
Elsewhere in the In-Tray
The same day, the UK delivered a statement at the Security Council on the Yemen crisis, listed on the government site as the United Kingdom unequivocally condemns the dangerous escalation by the Houthis in Yemen. I have read the headline only, and I flag it as such. It is a reminder that the energy debate is never separate from the world outside, and that a government with a solar farm to approve is also a government with a seat at a very serious table.
A Brief Moral
The moral is a small one. The state, when it works, is mostly dull. The best compliment you can pay a planning system is to forget it exists. I have not quite managed that, but I have come close, for about twenty minutes.
For more on how the machinery of government looks to its observers, our British civil service satire guide gives the long view, and Bohiney Magazine offers the American cousin of the same problem. If you need a joke with your toast, NewsBiscuit has the right kind of crumbs.
9.20pm. I have decided to treat the consent as a small public holiday. A biscuit, a cup of tea, and the calendar put away.
Good night, Diary. Praise the timetable.
SOURCE: bohiney.com