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A Lincolnshire planning committee voted 6-5 on Oct. 21 to approve National Grid's 400 kV Weston Marsh substation for the 1.5 GW Outer Dowsing wind farm; a second substation is still to be decided.
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Offshore wind turbines from the developer's consent announcement; the image may not show the Outer Dowsing site itself.
Image: Outer Dowsing
Source · Press image from the Outer Dowsing newsroom, used for news reporting.
South Holland District Council's planning committee voted 6-5, with two abstentions, on Oct. 21 to approve National Grid's 400 kV Weston Marsh Substation A in Lincolnshire, according to Local Democracy Reporter Oliver Castle, writing in Lincolnshire Online and the Spalding Voice on Oct. 22.
Substation A, approved 6-5 on Oct 21, is the 400 kV connection for the 1.5 GW Outer Dowsing wind farm, per the council report.
Illustration (AI-generated)
The substation is the grid connection point for the Outer Dowsing offshore wind farm, which has UK development consent for up to 100 turbines about 54 km (33 miles) off the Lincolnshire coast. The developers put the project's output at 1.5 GW. A report to the committee said the substation is needed to bring that power onto the network, and the approval comes with planning conditions.
The site is on Marsh Road, north of Weston and near Surfleet Seas End. Councillors debated for two and a half hours. Committee chairman James Avery acknowledged the loss of best and most versatile farmland and said the scheme is very unpopular with residents, but added that many objections were not strong enough to justify refusal on planning grounds, because the project is treated as critical national infrastructure.
Another councillor, Andrew Woolf, argued the substation was in the wrong place and warned that other solar and wind developers could seek to plug into the site. Members added a condition to cut Saturday construction hours and bar work on Sundays and bank holidays. National Grid's external affairs manager Craig Rivett told the meeting that landscape impacts can be mitigated and that biodiversity net gain will be provided.
Substation A is part of National Grid's Grimsby to Walpole project, which would see 140 km of pylons built through Lincolnshire. For a 1.5 GW offshore project, a consented grid connection node is a precondition for moving to construction. Without it, generation capacity cannot reach demand centres, which is the same constraint data-center developers face when they wait on grid access.
The UK Government granted the wind farm's development consent on Feb. 10, 2026, and the developers said at the time that underground cables would run from landfall near Anderby Marsh, north of Skegness, to an onshore substation at Surfleet Marsh in South Lincolnshire.
This vote covers only Substation A. Campaigners from Lincolnshire Against Needless Destruction objected that it was assessed in isolation, and the reporting says another substation and further works in the same network upgrade are due to be decided separately by the national government. The reports do not give a MW rating for the substation, a construction start date for it, or an in-service date, so none is stated here. Local residents' opposition may continue as those remaining decisions come forward.
