Cllr Bridget Smith                            ESE0073

Additional written evidence from Cllr Bridget Smith (Vice Chair of the District Councils’ Network and Leader of South Cambridgeshire District Council)

Dear Philip,

It was a great pleasure to give evidence to your Committee’s inquiry into ‘Enabling sustainable electrification of the UK economy’.

DCN councils are leading on net zero at a local level, supporting renewable energy developments and helping residents cut down on fossil fuels.

Far from being the barriers to enabling sustainable electrification of the UK economy, DCN councils and our communities are more often than not the drivers behind it. Councils across the country are working to deliver net zero and decarbonise the electricity system.

In my evidence to you, I committed to send you a selection of examples from across DCN’s network of this work:

• Somerset Council has created the largest council-owned battery storage system in the UK, providing 30MW energy storage to return to usage at peak times.

• Crawley Borough Council has completed phase 1 of a District Heat Network, which will provides heat to approximately 300 residential properties and 80,000sq ft of commercial office space. This provides a 350 tonne-per-year carbon saving.

• Cambridge City Council is using licensing requirements to gradually upgrade the taxi and PHV fleet in Cambridge and manage a switch towards EVs. The council will require all taxis to be electric by 2028.

• Oxford City Council’s Energy Superhub comprises a hybrid battery system to store renewable energy which can power up to 4000 homes. This also includes the most powerful vehicle rapid-charging hub in Europe powered just by renewable energy – with space to expand to charge 400 vehicles in the future.
• Exeter City Council – has built social housing to Passivhaus standard since 2009, delivering 150 homes to this standard. It delivered the first Passivhaus leisure centre and extra care village in the UK, removing reliance on conventional fuels. They will deliver 1,000 super-efficient homes in the next five years for council rent and private purchase.
• North Kesteven District Council has reduced its own emissions by 65% so far. Examples of their measures include usage of waste heat from the Sleaford Renewable Energy Plant for their main offices, as well as a biomass powered leisure centre.

Cllr Bridget Smith                            ESE0073

• Oxford City Council has worked with universities, NHS trusts, Oxfordshire County Council and local employers like BMW to develop a Zero Carbon Oxford roadmap to cut its emissions to net zero by 2040.
• Dorset Council administers the ‘Low Carbon Dorset’ scheme which delivers long-lasting effects and financial efficiencies to businesses, long past the five-year lifespan of the programme. Since April 2018 this has provided 645 grants, saved over 8,000 tonnes of CO2 and installed 11MW of renewable energy capacity.
• West Suffolk’s ‘Solar for Business’ is placing solar panels on roofs of businesses for free and then selling electricity to them at a cheaper cost. This has prevented 1,300 tonnes of CO2 being emitted and produces enough electricity to power 3,205 homes, with a further 5 MW of projects in the pipeline.

As I mentioned at the Committee session, grid constraints are the biggest challenge to the decarbonisation of our local communities, preventing individuals and businesses from transitioning away from fossil fuels. This is also stalling decarbonisation works and rollouts of EV charging infrastructure in our local areas. The Local Government Association (LGA) has found that more than a thousand clean energy projects with planning permission are waiting to be built with net zero ambitions at risk of being scuppered if grid connection challenges are not fixed. While councils and communities have said yes to over 1,300 renewable energy schemes that are waiting to be built, just 150 of these projects are currently under construction. The solar schemes awaiting construction would alone generate around 15,000 megawatts a day, enough to power 1.9 million homes.

Another significant barrier is the planning system. Local planning teams also currently have no ability to refuse to grant planning permission on the grounds of a lack of renewable provision, or where developers do not evidence that the required power provision exists. The local plan process is at risk of being completed in isolation from the grid connection process, with DNOs not currently statutory consultees on local plans or large planning applications. Without aligned planning cycles grid constraints are such that we risk unsound local plans and uncontrolled growth outside of plan.

If local authorities are to be trusted partners in delivering on net zero, the level (currently 50MW) at which an energy project is assessed by the Energy Secretary should be raised.

We’d also like to see Local Area Energy Plans put on a statutory footing and a plan-led approach, with local authorities provided with the resources and powers to deliver these effectively. These plans last for up to five years once adopted, aligned with the period for DNO’s investment plans.

Local authorities are best placed to support communities and businesses to decarbonise the grid. Our communities trust us and our strong links to local partners will help us deliver. But we need an established role in delivering net zero, along with the corresponding powers and funding to build up capacity.

DCN Councils are already active in this area but we need the resources and powers for our Local Area Energy Plans and to be able to shape investment in the grid, if we are to ensure a sustainable future. Councils need additional powers and resources to reduce domestic and business demand, which would flatten out the future demand and create grid capacity.

Increased flexibility is also required for onshore wind, which is now one of the lowest cost forms of new electricity generation and which can be built quickly.

During the evidence session you asked me if local authorities are able to influence the location of grid connection proposals. The experience of DCN member councils is that neither local authorities nor the public are made aware of gird connection proposals until they are determined and then are presented on National Grid’s Transmission Entry Capacity (TEC) Register as a fait

Cllr Bridget Smith                            ESE0073

accompli. This is a significant cause of concern for councils and local communities, and our member councils continue to raise this issue directly with government.

I would be delighted to welcome you and the Committee to South Cambridgeshire District Council to see first-hand both the challenges facing local authorities in relation to grid capacity and the pioneering work that we are doing, bringing residents and our community with us, to decarbonise the energy system.

We are incredibly proud to be the area in the country with highest uptake of solar PV at household level and the fastest rate of installation in the country since 2018 because of strong community engagement on the importance of this issue.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if I can provide any further information on the important role of councils in driving sustainable electrification of the UK economy.

Yours sincerely,

Cllr Bridget Smith, Vice Chair of the District Councils’ Network and Leader of South Cambridgeshire District Council

February 2024