By Jon Barnard, Director, Greyfriars Project Management
The East of England is the frontline of the UK’s clean energy transition, with the Southern North Sea filling with offshore wind capacity at a pace that would have seemed implausible a decade ago. Onshore, a new generation of transmission infrastructure is being consented and contested in equal measure. Almost all of it depends on one legal mechanism: the Development Consent Order.
Reflecting on conversations with colleagues who attended EEEGR’s SNS 2026 conference, I was struck by how much of the discussion came back to the DCO decisions that have landed in quick succession recently. Those decisions will shape the energy landscape of this region for the next fifty years. It got me thinking about what we have all learnt from them and what lessons from the transport infrastructure world, where I have spent much of my career, would be worth sharing with colleagues in the energy sector and beyond.
I have spent the last fifteen years taking Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects through the DCO process, first at Norfolk County Council and now as Director of Greyfriars Project Management. Seven of them so far, the most recent being the A46 Newark Bypass, a £686 million scheme on which Greyfriars was DCO lead for Skanska and National Highways, consented by the Secretary of State in October 2025.
A Pivotal 18 Months for East of England Energy DCOs
The last year and a half has produced a cluster of decisions – with three offshore wind consents standing out.
Five Estuaries was consented on 17 December 2025. RWE leads it on behalf of a consortium including Macquarie, ESB and Sumitomo Corporation. It is an extension to the Galloper Wind Farm off the north Essex and south Suffolk coast, covering 128km² across two Southern North Sea seabed areas, with up to 79 turbines and around 1.1GW of capacity. Its cables come ashore at Sandy Point near Frinton-on-Sea and run underground to the proposed East Anglia Connection Node, which is itself part of National Grid’s Norwich to Tilbury project.
Two further consents were granted on the same day, 14 May 2026. North Falls is RWE’s extension to Greater Gabbard, roughly 40km off the East Anglia coast, with capacity of around 1GW. It went from DCO submission in July 2024 to consent in under two years. Dogger Bank South was approved on the same date. At 3GW it is one of the largest offshore wind consents ever granted in the UK, although its decision ran past the original statutory deadline while the Secretary of State asked for information that had not been produced during examination.
I have spent the last fifteen years leading major Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects through the DCO process — first in local government at Norfolk County Council, and now as Director of Greyfriars Project Management. Most recently, the A46 Newark Bypass — a £686 million scheme on which we served as DCO lead for Skanska and National Highways, receiving Secretary of State consent in October 2025 — was my seventh DCO. What follows draws on that experience, the consenting picture across the East of England and the systemic challenges that picture reveals.
The Grid Constraint: Norwich to Tilbury
You cannot discuss the East of England’s energy DCO landscape without dealing with the fundamental problem, which is that the transmission network cannot currently take what is being consented offshore.
National Grid’s Norwich to Tilbury project is one of 17 megaprojects in the Great Grid Upgrade programme. It proposes a 400kV overhead line running roughly 180km from Norwich Main substation via Bramford in Suffolk and a new East Anglia Connection Node in Tendring, Essex, to a new Tilbury North Substation. It was submitted for DCO examination in August 2025, accepted in September 2025, and is currently in examination. National Grid describes the East of England as a powerhouse of renewable energy with historically limited transmission infrastructure. That is the crux of the problem.
Norwich to Tilbury went through five separate rounds of public consultation after launching in January 2022, under three different project names, before it reached DCO submission. The opposition, particularly around the visual impact of overhead pylons across the Norfolk and Suffolk landscape, is significant and worth paying attention to. It echoes Norfolk Vanguard, where consent granted in 2020 was quashed on judicial review because cumulative onshore impacts, specifically the substations shared with the sister project Norfolk Boreas, had not been properly assessed. That re-determination was expensive, slow and avoidable.
The lesson I take from that, and from my own work, is a simple one. Scope what you need to scope. Be honest about associated development. And never assume that related projects will be treated as separate, whether by an examining authority, a court on judicial review, or a community that has to live with both.
Lessons from the A46: What Transport Infrastructure Can Teach Energy
Skanska appointed me as DCO lead for the A46 Newark Bypass, taking a 300-document application through the Planning Inspectorate to Secretary of State consent. The scheme is a 6.5km widening between Farndon and Winthorpe roundabouts, improving one of the strategic routes linking the M1, A1 and the Humber ports. It received its DCO from Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander in October 2025 after a year-long examination.
My first DCO was the Broadland Gateway, the Norwich Northern Distributor Road, in 2009, in the very early years of the Planning Act 2008 regime. Across seven DCOs since then, a few principles have held. Here is what I think transfers most directly to the energy projects now going through examination in this region.
Lesson 1: Early community engagement is the foundation of a successful examination, not a box to tick
On the A46 we were talking to a local action group in Winthorpe long before we were anywhere near statutory consultation. As a direct result of those conversations, the road alignment was moved further away from the community. By the time we got to examination we had a track record of listening, and that changed the character of the whole process. Community input during the hearings, from interested parties, landowners and local businesses, carried on refining entrances, mitigation measures and the interface with adjacent planning applications.
The parallel for energy developers is a direct one. The onshore elements of offshore wind projects, the cable routes, substations and landfall works, affect communities in a way that turbines 40km offshore do not. Projects that have struggled at examination have often done so because community and cumulative concerns were still unresolved going in. Investing in proper engagement before you are obliged to is not altruism. It is risk management.
Lesson 2: Programme discipline is what separates good DCO teams from the rest
On the A46, every programme milestone set two years in advance was met. That does not happen by accident. It requires a team where everyone understands their deliverable, the interdependencies, and the cost of a slipped milestone. A DCO application of 300 documents — environmental statements, transport assessments, draft orders, explanatory memoranda, compulsory acquisition justifications — across a multidisciplinary team of lawyers, ecologists, noise specialists and engineers demands rigour. The six-month examination is non-negotiable. Every failure to produce a document or respond to an Examining Authority question on time is logged and will inform the Inspector’s recommendation. Front-load the programme. Get the pre-application work genuinely complete before submission.
Lesson 3: Simple project management tools beat complicated ones
Across seven DCOs I have found that complex project management tools tend to get in the way. If a system is so elaborate that team members cannot update their own inputs without help from a specialist, it has stopped being a tool and become a risk. On the A46 we used a shared spreadsheet. One version of the truth, clearly owned, and understood by everybody. Every team member knew the status of every document, every stakeholder commitment and every hearing.
Energy sector DCO teams typically span the developer’s in-house team, external legal counsel, environmental consultants, specialist subconsultants, contractors and third parties such as National Grid. The number of people with inputs to the document schedule adds up quickly. The answer is the same either way. Reduce it, simplify it, and keep a single source of truth with a named owner.
Lesson 4: Get the contractor involved early
Skanska’s involvement as contractor at DCO stage is unusual in a sector where contractors normally stand back until consent is granted, and it made our application materially better. Contractor input on construction methodology, phasing, traffic management and environmental mitigation meant our commitments were things that could actually be delivered rather than theoretical positions. When an Inspector questions whether a mitigation measure is deliverable, a contractor who has signed up to it puts you in a far stronger position than a developer speculating about what a future contractor might do.
For offshore wind developers routing cable corridors through rural East Anglia, the read-across is obvious. The earlier the contractor or EPC team helps shape the DCO requirements, particularly on cable installation methodology, agricultural restoration and construction traffic, the more credible the application will be.
Lesson 5: Examination is an opportunity, not just a hurdle
Most of the anxiety around examination is about opposition from local authorities, statutory consultees, environmental groups or landowners. That anxiety is understandable. Norfolk Vanguard’s judicial review and Dogger Bank South overrunning its statutory decision deadline both show that things can go wrong.
But examination is also where a well-prepared team can do its best work. Working alongside leading legal and technical specialists in open hearings, watching experts hold up the environmental case under questioning, and engaging properly with the Examining Authority’s concerns is where the pre-application investment pays off. Inspectors are sophisticated people. They respond well to teams who are honest about trade-offs, forthcoming with information and prepared to engage with complexity rather than dodge it. I find examination the most interesting part of the whole process.
The Regulatory Moment: The Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025
The context around all of these projects has shifted. The Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 received Royal Assent on 18 December 2025 and is the most significant reform to the NSIP regime since it began. DCO decisions had been taking over four years on average, against 2.6 years in 2015. The statutory pre-consultation requirements, which had been averaging two years, are being substantially reduced. National Policy Statements must now be updated at least every five years, which addresses one of the most common causes of litigation: decisions challenged against out-of-date policy.
The reforms are expected to speed up NSIP delivery by an average of 12 months and unlock up to £7.5 billion in economic benefits over the next decade. The Government is also consulting on reforms to judicial review for infrastructure, on the basis that 58% of DCOs have been challenged by judicial review in recent years even though only a handful have been overturned. A more proportionate challenge mechanism would matter a great deal to energy developers in this region.
The Government’s Implementation Plan for Streamlining Infrastructure Planning, published in March 2026, sets out a target timeline for changes coming into force between spring and summer 2026. So the Norwich to Tilbury examination is running against a backdrop of live regulatory change. Developers and their teams need to keep track of which provisions have been commenced and which have not, because the landscape is still moving.
Looking ahead
The pipeline of energy DCOs in the East of England is substantial. East Anglia TWO is in development. Norfolk Vanguard West and Norfolk Vanguard East, now a 50/50 joint venture between RWE and KKR with CfDs secured in Allocation Round 7 at £91.20/MWh, are targeting financial close in summer 2026. The Great Grid Upgrade will keep bringing transmission DCOs to East Anglia for years yet.
As a Norfolk Ambassador, part of the Norfolk Business Board’s programme bringing together business leaders, educators and public figures to champion Norfolk as a place to invest and grow, I am very conscious of what this pipeline could mean for the county. Clean energy is already one of Norfolk’s defining economic sectors. The projects being consented now will not just connect renewable power to the grid. They will bring supply chain investment, skilled jobs and long-term economic activity to communities across Norfolk and Suffolk. Getting the DCO process right, for the wind farms, the transmission infrastructure and the onshore cable corridors connecting the two, is not only a planning matter. It is foundational to the region’s economic future.
The cluster of consents in late 2025 and early 2026 suggests a system starting to move at the pace the energy transition needs. But pace cannot come at the cost of quality. Under the reformed NSIP regime, the projects that get through examination most cleanly will still be the ones that have invested most in their pre-application work, built real relationships with communities, and held their programme discipline from start to finish.
None of those lessons belong to one sector. I first learnt them on a distributor road in Norfolk in 2009, and they apply just as well to a cable corridor running through the Suffolk countryside today.
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Jon Barnard is Director of Greyfriars Project Management, based in Norwich. He has led seven DCOs under the Planning Act 2008 regime, most recently as DCO lead for the £686 million A46 Newark Bypass, appointed by Skanska on behalf of National Highways. Jon has previously provided DCO application support for the Great Yarmouth Third River Crossing and the Broadland Gateway (Norwich Northern Distributor Road), and currently supports the Great Yarmouth Operations and Maintenance Hub project. For further information, visit greyfriarspm.com.