Project Nutcracker: Why The UK Government Should Be Safeguarding Land For The Great Grid Upgrade

In this Nutcracker, I highlight something that requires no new legislation but does require urgent action by Government – the safeguarding of land for the "Great Grid Upgrade". 

We're at the start of the biggest rewiring of the UK's power lines ever seen. With the push for a renewable energy future, and significant power demand springing up from new customers like data centres, existing overhead lines are insufficient and are needed in new places. The queue of solar, wind and other customers seeking urgent connection to the grid is so long that the Government is having to change the rules in a bid to manage demand. The success of the Government's Clean Power 2030 strategy hinges on getting the power lines in place, fast. 

Everyone knows the challenges of the planning system. Even with the current reforms, it will take some years to secure the consents needed. In the meantime there's nothing to stop local authorities granting planning permission for buildings right under or over the proposed cable routes, and they are doing just this. This means that National Grid is facing the constant threat that part way through the arduous process of designing, consulting on and applying for a scheme, it has to go back to the drawing board and revise the route. 

This simply makes no sense. It isn't just a pain for National Grid, but has knock-on effects for the UK's wider energy and growth ambitions, not to mention bill payers who ultimately pay for the extra work involved. 

We urgently need a solution, and luckily there is one. Government just needs to use it. I explain in this article how safeguarding works, and why it is justified for the Great Grid Upgrade. 

How does safeguarding work?

Safeguarding is a mechanism within the planning system designed to protect important infrastructure (existing or prospective) from conflicting developments¹. Land in England can be designated by the Secretary of State for Housing and Local Communities (or Welsh Ministers in Wales) via a "safeguarding direction."² A safeguarding direction isn't an outright ban on development by others within the safeguarded zone. It simply requires the local planning authority to consult the entity named in the direction (the "Safeguardee") on planning applications which fall within the safeguarded zone. Often directions provide exemptions for proposed developments of a type that wouldn't be problematic.

Where the Safeguardee is consulted on a planning application within the safeguarded zone, it can advise the local planning authority to either:

1. go ahead and grant the application (if it isn't a problem); 
2. grant the application but subject to certain conditions which will ensure it is compatible with the Safeguardee's infrastructure; or
3. refuse the application. If this is the Safeguardees's position, the local planning authority cannot grant the application without referring it to the Secretary of State or Welsh Ministers, who will rule on whether it may be granted or must be refused. 

When is it used at the moment?

Safeguarding directions are used for some large, linear transport schemes. Examples include:

• the suite of safeguarding directions issued for HS2, imposed and varied as necessary over a number of years as the project evolved; and 
• the safeguarding direction for Crossrail 2, which remains in place despite this scheme being indefinitely mothballed (the retention of this direction is therefore somewhat controversial)

There are also a couple of examples of linear energy projects securing safeguarding directions:

• Hynet CO2 pipeline secured such a direction in Wales and an equivalent direction in England.
• There also appears to have been a safeguarding direction given in relation to Esso's Southampton to London Pipeline Project, although I have not been able to find a copy online.

All of the above are examples of directions that safeguard land for important future projects. But directions can also be used to protect land in the vicinity of important military and aviation sites which could be compromised if development were consented.

Most recently, in November 2025, the Government announced that it will be using safeguarding to protect AI Growth Zones. Hopefully, such directions will avoid future clashes of intended land use like the one which led to bp scrapping its hydrogen project at Teesside to allow for the site's use for an AI datacentre.

Real-life examples of how it would help the Great Grid Upgrade

Eastern Green Link 2 (EGL2) is a project to create a transmission line between Peterhead in Scotland and Drax in Yorkshire via the North Sea. This £4.3bn project is a joint venture between SSEN Transmission and National Grid. It is one of the projects classified by Ofgem as most urgently needed – meriting "Accelerated Strategic Transmission Investment" status (ASTI projects). It is currently under construction. When completed it will transmit enough power for 2 million homes. 

National Grid obtained planning permission and a compulsory purchase order for the onshore elements of the EGL2 scheme in England. In accordance with good practice, they obtained the legal right to lay and maintain the cable across its route (an easement) as opposed to outright freehold acquisition of the land required. This was fine until National Grid realised a farmer had got planning permission for, and built, a new barn right on top of part of the cable route. Quite apart from the adverse public relations implications if National Grid had sought to acquire the newly built barn and knock it down, they simply hadn't sought the legal powers to do so. The barn didn't exist at the time compulsory purchase powers were obtained, so there was no reason to believe they'd need more than the modest powers of an easement to execute their works. The farmer was adamant he wouldn't shift the barn, as was his right, and so (causing considerable delay and additional design work) National Grid was forced to apply for planning permission for a new route along an alignment the farmer would agree to. 

In another case, National Grid came to construct a section of cable it had consent for, only to find that a solar farm has been built on top of the cable route. Laying the cable necessitated disconnecting the solar farm and removing many solar panels – with significant implications in terms of safety, delay and compensation costs owed to the solar developer. 

The problem is going to get worse unless Government acts

A project like EGL2 falls mostly within the sea, but many of National Grid's ASTI projects will cover hundreds of kilometres onshore. Without safeguarding directions in place, landowners applying for planning permission may or may not be aware of upcoming National Grid projects which might affect their land. Even if they are aware, they might decide to seek planning permission anyway, and the local authority has no duty to consult National Grid before granting permission. Busy planning officers might not even think to consider which planning applications fall within the likely boundary of a future transmission line. And so the problem falls through the net.

A safeguarding direction over the land likely to be needed for a new transmission line would ensure National Grid gets notified when a relevant planning application is made. The local planning authority can then make an informed decision about whether to grant consent, and on what terms. 

The scramble for land around "hubs" could also be controlled via safeguarding

Safeguarding land around future substations could also be a big help. At the moment, when National Grid announces its intention to build a substation in a particular location, a land grab is often triggered. Potential "customers" who intend to connect to the future substation (solar, battery storage or data centre developers for example) start taking options over the land. National Grid won't know the precise footprint of their substation until they have done a detailed design. However, their options may be curtailed, and the risk of having to redesign will be high, if other developers are snapping up parts of the site before them. 

You might ask why National Grid doesn't buy the land themselves before others do? The answer is that under the terms of their licence, their expenditure is controlled by Ofgem for the sake of the consumer (to whom costs are passed via electricity bills). Pre-emptively buying an option over a large site before they know exactly what land is needed for the substation isn't allowed by Ofgem. In addition to design challenges, this can also mean that when National Grid eventually comes to buy land (via compulsory purchase or private negotiations) the cost has been inflated by market activity in these hub locations. The engineering cost of a sub-optimal solution, designed around the early movers, will also often be greater.

By safeguarding hub sites, National Grid would have some control over this effect. Safeguarding would incentivise would-be developers to engage with National Grid before applying for planning permission. National Grid would have some leverage over those developers to encourage them to locate in areas least likely to cause future problems. This is surely common sense? There is a otherwise an irony in the very customers for whose benefit National Grid is creating a substation rendering it potentially impossible or unnecessarily costly to deliver. 

Existing buried cables should also be safeguarded to save lives and save money

There is also a strong case for safeguarding land through which existing transmission cables run in built up areas. I'm not talking about the "distribution" cables that run through every street and are lower voltage, but the super high-voltage 275kv plus transmission cables which are visible as overhead lines when running through open countryside but become buried underground when they enter a town. 

You may be surprised to know that these cables can sometimes run through people's sideways and the backs of their gardens without them knowing. You might think they'd be buried too deep to be a danger, but due to their age and changes in safety standards and ground conditions over time, some can be less than 1m below the surface. If a person undertakes building works and accidentally hits one, there is a high risk of death, and (depending on local network resilience at the time) an outage to hundreds of thousands of customers.

It doesn't happen that often, but it's a big problem when it does. I've heard of a 3-storey extension to a house being granted planning permission in a sideway directly over a 275kv cable. Not only is the carrying out of this construction work incredibly dangerous, but such over-building prevents urgent access to the cable if required. National Grid was never consulted by the local planning authority before this consent was granted. There is an information service (Linesearch Before You Dig), but it's not always consulted by homeowners before they apply for planning permission or start works.

Where there is a "cable strike", remedial works can sometimes run into millions. The older cables are oil-filled. In a recent case, £8m of works were needed to stop oil from a cable hit by a home-owner's contractor seeping into a nearby river. Again, these were works for which planning permission was granted by the local authority in ignorance of the existence of the cable.

Sometimes a planning application isn't even required for works which hit cables. Permitted development rights allow certain works to be carried out simply with a "prior approval" by the local planning authority. Without a safeguarding direction in place to flag the existence of these dangerous cables, it's all too easy for a council to give its sign-off without realising the consequences.

Are there any reasons that Government might hesitate?

Thought would need to be given to the stage at which a safeguarding direction is appropriate as each project evolves from pre-application consultation to application and beyond. Most linear projects begin as large swathes of land which are gradually refined to a narrower corridor for which a planning application is made. There is no hard and fast rule about how advanced and well understood the land requirements for a project need to be before land can be safeguarded. Crossrail 2 is (at best) a twinkle in the eye, yet land is safeguarded across London for it. In contrast, the land for Hynet wasn't safeguarded until near the very end of the development consent process.

Some might ask what's so special about National Grid's projects that they merit safeguarding? There are many projects classed as "nationally significant infrastructure projects" (NSIPs) under the Planning Act 2008, so should land for all of them be safeguarded? 

The circumstances of each project would need to be considered on their merits, but linear schemes have particular need of safeguarding. Most NSIPs are located in a single site, often owned or under option (in whole or part) by the NSIP developer. The NSIP developer will generally be in contact with most landowners from an early stage and stay in contact with them in a bid to acquire the land by negotiation. In these circumstances, it's hard to imagine a person within the boundary of the scheme being unaware of the NSIP proposals that might affect them. It is equally unlikely that the local planning authority would be unaware of the location of the proposals when considering a planning application on or near the site.

The situation is quite different for long linear schemes. It's impossible over hundreds of kilometres for National Grid to know every landowner and track land changing hands over the many years required to develop, consent and build a project. Equally, it is not easy for the many planning authorities along the route to stay aware of the implications of a linear NSIP for their planning decisions over such a long period as scheme boundaries change etc. Safeguarding puts the issue on everyone's radar and gives the NSIP promoter the chance to be consulted before a planning permission is granted which might compromise their project.

In addition, of course, National Grid's transmission projects are in the unique position of being key to delivery of so many other NSIPs. Safeguarding their routes therefore has a much wider benefit to the UK. 

For this reason, perhaps the next update of the National Networks NPS (NN NPS) might include a presumption that transmission NSIPs are given priority over other NSIPs where schemes overlap and the transmission line proposals are advanced. Safeguarding directions can only apply to planning applications coming forward for decision by a local planning authority. They cannot act as directions to another Secretary of State when deciding a conflicting NSIP. Hence the need for this to be dealt with at a policy level in the NN NPS instead.

In the meantime, I hope National Grid and Government get together to start mapping out some safeguarding plans as soon as possible.

Footnotes

1 Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015 (in Articles 18, 31 and 34) for England; and The Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (Wales) Order 2012 (articles 14(3), 18(1) and 22(5)) in Wales.

2 Safeguarding of specific projects is not possible in Scotland in the same way, and is not covered by this article.