Power line sparks pledge from re-elected North Shropshire MP Owen Paterson
It was straight back to work for North Shropshire MP Owen Paterson who has pledged to accelerate a scheme to create a new overhead electricity line in the region.
Re-elected Mr Paterson was speaking yesterday as he officially opened a £12 million substation on the edge of Oswestry.
It forms part of a larger, £30 million scheme to secure power supply to 120,000 homes and businesses for generations to come in the north of the county.
Mr Paterson has vowed to press the Government to cut red tape to accelerate the programme for the building of the electricity line from Oswestry to Wem.
He said Wem and Whitchurch would not attract businesses unless the towns had a better power supply.
Mr Paterson was told that once the application for development consent was made to the Government it could take up to 18 months to be processed.
Mark Sobczak for SP Energy Networks, said that the project was expected to go out to statutory consultation in the autumn with an application for consent made in the summer of 2018. If given the go-ahead, construction work would start in 2020.
Mr Paterson said: "To take 18 months for development consent is nonsense.
"If Shropshire Council and parish councils are happy and public consultation has finished there is no reason why it should take 18 months for the department to make a decision.
"I shall be contacting the secretary of state to get this time scale accelerated.
"Businesses in north Shropshire are suffering because they need a secure power supply. One company has build its own anaerobic digester to ensure it has that security."
It has taken three years to build the state-of-the-art Oswestry sub-station to replace the original 1950s system.
It has included the construction of a third supply line from the National Grid at Legacy into Oswestry to secure supply for the region.
Mr Sobczak, head of 132kV programmes at SP Energy Networks, said: “The new substation will help to ensure reliable supplies of electricity for homes and businesses across north Shropshire, Welshpool, Newtown and south Wrexham for decades to come."
Engineering and applied science students from North Shropshire College attended the opening to see for themselves their studies in the real world.
