Representation by Alison Shaw
- Date submitted
- 14 November 2022
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
I wish to register as an Interested Party in the Examination of Equinor’s SEP/DEP application for DCO. I am a longstanding resident and parish councillor in Oulton, Norfolk, and have already participated three times in the 6-month NSIP examination processes for Hornsea Three, Norfolk Vanguard and Norfolk Boreas. The path of Equinor’s proposed cable route would cut (and burrow) a swathe right through the northern, western and southern parts of this parish. A major crossover of the SEP/DEP cable trench with Vattenfall’s Vanguard/Boreas cable trench would have to be constructed within metres of the parish boundary. We live in a terraced cottage [Redacted], which is currently impacted by the construction of a Highway Intervention Scheme at its southern end, in order to facilitate an access route to the Main Construction Compounds for Orsted’s Hornsea Three and Vattenfall’s Vanguard/Boreas projects. This will transform our quiet rural lane into an industrial slip road for two-way HGV traffic, for the foreseeable future. Both developers have chosen to site their main compounds in Oulton and we will therefore bear the brunt of lights, noise, emissions and HGV traffic, six days a week, for many years to come. Researching and responding to the DCO applications for these first 3 projects over the past 5 years has already stolen much of my time and energy, and most of my peace of mind. And I am not alone in that. This strong community, in the heart of which we have brought up our three children, is already demoralised and weary of contemplating the next 10 years of disruption, disturbance and environmental degradation. The combined impacts of these projects on this parish are overwhelming. It is devastating now to face the prospect of trying to present the severity of the cumulative impacts of the onshore elements of all these projects – for a fourth time – to yet another panel of inspectors. I must stress that we are utterly supportive of the goal of reaching Net Zero, preferably before 2050, and completely understand the need for the massive contribution that offshore wind will make to that endeavour. As SEP/DEP is a near-shore project, this Applicant was encouraged by many people in Norfolk to re-negotiate its grid connection point, for instance to Walpole. It has steadfastly refused to consider doing that. Such an alteration would completely avoid the SEP/DEP project adding to the already toxic mix of adverse impacts from the other projects on the onshore environment and communities. The tragedy for East Anglia is that the connection of all these projects to the onshore grid has NOT been strategically planned. As a consequence, much of the wind resource will be wasted, and the onshore environment and communities will be needlessly and expensively sacrificed. This could be done so much better.