Solar Media Market Research Analyst Josh Cornes follows the time that Solar PV developments spend in the planning system, because delays and refusal to delay the Build speed speed.
Solar PV Buildout In the United Kingdom, the seventh year of growth in a row continues to pick up, with growth rowing a year.
With initiatives led by the government such as Clean Power 2030 (CP30) Buildout and encouraging the contracts for difference (CFD) mechanism, it is unlikely that this growth will slow down.
However, there are several factors in the game to hinder this growth, so that the opportunities of the UK are harmed to achieve the CP30 target of 45-47GW capacity for solar generation by 2030.
Two important factors in the timeline for completing projects are grid connections and planning.
Developers who obtain grid connections before they are realistic to build a project, back if it was cheap and easy to get a connection date speculatively, the connecting queue has hidden with ‘Zombie’ projects. The Domino effect of this is that projects that now go through development will be connected to 13 years in the future. Some are completed mechanically, but take another year to be fully connected to the grid.
Planning is also essential when viewing the timeline of a project; Figure 1 shows each approved project in the UK that did not appeal and how many weeks expired between submission and approval.
Figure 1: British sun applications continue to take longer due to planning, whereby the variance increases, making it more difficult for developers to plan the future.
Between 2010 and 2015, when UK Solar was at its peak, the average time for a project to get approval was approximately 29 weeks, albeit with a few deviations. Although the average capacity of projects was considerably lower, the majority in the 5-20 MWP and a scattering in the reach of 20-50 MWp, there was a huge amount of more, with more than 1,600 submissions in 3 years.
Looking further in the line, 2020 when projects started to go again with the planning, and although there was no particularly large number, there is an immediate distribution of points, with some projects being approved almost 140 weeks later in 2019.
This was a precedent for the coming years because projects lasted longer to go through the planning. The current longest time for a project to go through the planning at the level of Local Planning Authority (LPA) is 177 weeks, which was submitted in 2020 and was approved more than 3 years later. However, this can be reported, with 3 projects submitted in 2021 pending a decision, including a 21MWP site and a 24MWP site.
It is important that although the process is much more rigorous, nationally important infrastructure projects (NSIPs) go faster from submission to approval than a lot of LPA project projects, with decisions that take somewhere between 56 and 90 weeks. An exception was the Sunnica Solar Farm, for which a decision was pushed until after the general election in July 2024.
Local opposition is an important factor that causes this delay, with opposition to projects that are increasing. A big reason for this is a lack of understanding of the most important benefits of solar farms. Training the locals around solar farms is a focus of developers currently and something that is needed as a crucial part of the planning process.
Local opposition is an important factor that causes this delay, with opposition to projects that are increasing. This is often the result of a lack of understanding of the most important benefits of solar energy plants, and training the locals is increasingly a focus for developers and something that must remain central as a crucial part of the planning process.
Another cause is the lack of training and personnel at LPA level, which means that developers must hold ‘hand’ with authorities through the planning process. There are a large number of obstacles and conditions that must be fired before a project can be built, with long, extended processes such as country investigations and checking archaeological conditions that must be played, if not in some cases skipped.
In 2025, developers see 10 months for a decision as a success, with a target of one year for higher LPA capacity projects. The average waiting time in the previous 5 years has been around 45 weeks, with the waiting time that Yoy is increasing.
Although there are some projects that last up to three years, there are some projects that also go through the process quickly. South Kesteven District Council has set up and approved two projects that were submitted within five months in December; A site of 39 MW took only three months to go through the process. Shropshire Council is another with two approvals in the same period, although it gets a much greater volume of applications and has a higher refusal than we would like to see.
How are the planning of refusals that influence timelines for solar development?
Planning refusal is an important roadblock when developing a solar energy center. The refusal percentage since the beginning of 2024 is almost 25%, the highest we have ever seen, and an increase of the 15% and 20% seen in 2022 and 2023.
The fact that a site means “loss of high -quality agricultural land” is a common reason for councils, a simple excuse that the majority of the projects than appeal and are approved. In the past five years there has been a success rate of 80% for projects on appeal and in 2025 so far there is a success rate of 100% (12 projects).
Other developers decide to go off the re -submission route, taking into account feedback from the refused application and recommendations from the council, to go back to the planning for a new attempt to approve approval. Both processes waste a lot of time, with the average time of the original entry for approval on appeal, in almost 2 years, more than double that seen in projects approved by the local planning authorities, whereby some projects are withdrawn or refused, so that the projects are further postponed.
Some LPAs are fantastic for solar energy approvals: Scottish councils such as FIFE, Angus, Aberdenshire and North Ayrshire have approved almost 40 projects since 2022 and only refuse three. Other councils such as Wiltshire, East Riding of Yorkshire and Northumberland also have a strong success rate with 34 approved projects and only three refused between them.
Successes such as these show that with local support and a positive perspective on the level of the council, there is potential to push to the goals set out by the National Energy System Operator (NESO) prior to CP30.
It has been announced that the application period for developers to prove “strategic coordination” with CP30 is now July, with results that are private announced privately to developers in September 2025. It is expected that it is a silence in applications during this period with developers who are waiting for their hands for their gate 2 roster connections. This can offer a fantastic opportunity for LPAs to make up for the existing planning applications.
It is clear that grid connections are not the only barrier when looking at the goals for CP30. The planning must be accelerated, with just over 21GWP solar sun that is currently operational in the VK, 25GWP of Nutschal Ground approved and 15GWP on appeal or pending a decision, the projects in pre-property inspection must be pushed faster. LPAs must also work on refusal rates and any fear of making the local opposition upset.
All the above data comes from the analysis of Solar Media Market Research, which is accessiblehere. E -mail an e -mail to book a demo and gain access[email protected].
Representatives of Solar Media Market Research will present themselves in July at the UK Solar Summit of our publisher Solar Media. Visit the site to see the agenda and book tickets here.
