No Pylons 29/01/24

Rosie and Charleys highly informative Zoom call
www.nopylons.co.uk

Please do click okay and I’d like to say welcome to everybody it’s so great that you able to come today and sacrifice your Monday evening to talk about how we can fight this opposed pylon scheme in Lincolnshire hope you can all can you all hear me okay thumbs up yeah yeah okay great

Thank you um so and that’s exactly what it is it’s a proposal it’s not a definite you know forone conclusion even though that’s how National bid are presenting it so is a proposal and we can stand together so I’m here today to talk about that and I have muted everybody to start

With just because from previous meetings I’ve been in you have you hear people’s dogs in the background all kinds of rustling and things it’s just very distracting so I have muted everybody but after we’ve heard the presentation that Rosie’s very kindly put together for us and also Colin Davey who’s our

County counselor is going to give us a little bit of a brief update what the council’s position is on this after that then anybody who wants to speak you very welcome to do so and the best thing to do would be to click the raise your hand

Button which you should be able to see at the bottom of your screen if not you can just hold your hand up and hopefully we’ll see you it’s better if you can hit that raise your hand button because then you go to the front of the queue and you

Can also write in the chat anytime you like questions or comments and if there are questions I’ll try to spot them and either raise them with Rosie Colin or um perhaps one of our committee so at the moment there are three people on our Campaign Committee Peter Phillips whose name I

Saw are you there Peter can you give us a wave oh screen’s not not showing his picture at the moment oh there we go it’s hand clap so Peter’s there and also cat as well who may or may not be able to join us today and myself so um before we I

Hand over to Rosie I just wanted to make a bit of a plea to say we need more help so um if you’re able to put some time into the campaign whether that’s joining in with um organizing things or trying to coordinate things or whether you might um be the coordinator in your

Local area because obviously the route is long and there are many villages along the way and we need to get the word out to as many people as we can so it’d be great to have people who are taking on that responsibility of making sure the information gets out in their

Community and anything else that you might like to help with would be brilliant I’ve put the email address in the chat there or you can message us on Facebook I think that was everything I wanted to say oh just the other thing was that you

Know so much has happened in just over a week you know no pylons Linker didn’t exist 12 days ago and I don’t know about you but I hadn’t heard about this pylon scheme until 10 days ago and now it seems It’s been a bit of a whirlwind

Since then you know the Facebook group has over 800 people we’ve now got a website the cbook together and um you know we’re here this evening talking about this oh there’s some people waiting so A lot’s already happened and there’s a long way to go but um I think it’s it’s

Great that we’re all here today to discuss it so now no more walking for me to Rosie to give us some tips from the East Anglia pons thank you very much um are you able to swap the hosting because I can’t share the slides I’ve got so um let me know when that’s

Done okay so I think ah so I should now admit people presumably okay so I okay sorry Allow it’s not allow me to do that hang on let’s see if I can sorry it’s not letting me I know might be that one can you see can you see a PowerPoint now or not no uh now let’s try can you now see nope not sure what’s

Happening uh right it says I’m screen sharing so it should be working but what can you all see just the same as normal yeah I can’t I don’t think sorry more people in I don’t think I can share properly from here it’s um only letting me share web pages and not

Um not any PowerPoint let’s just try that here we go right does that work right and I’ve also got to okay so I now you’ll have to shout if you can’t hear because I now when I’m sharing I can’t see you all so I’m just gonna have

To assume you can all hear me um unless someone interferes and um tells me they can’t um so I’m Rosie Pearson I was where you are uh now about two years ago April 2022 when we in es suffk and Norfolk all got letters through our door telling us about 180 kilometer pile on

Run between nor and Tilbury um so that was our first non-statutory consultation it’s the same one you’ve got now um we’ve actually now had a second non-stat consultation which we weren’t supposed to have and it’s not on your schedule in Linker uh but who knows whether you have

One or not um and we are now waiting for our third consultation the statutary one in about April um so what I’m going to do is I’m going to give you I’m only going to talk for about 10 minutes um and just to show you lots of maps that sort of explain uh

What we’re campaigning against and for uh I’m going to tell you a bit about the background the so-called great grid upgrade um where you are in the planning process and what happens next and I say how to campaign you all know how to campaign but just going to tell you a

Bit about what we’ve done um and things that you can literally copy from us to save you time if it’s easier so the great grid up grade will require more cables between 2023 and 2030 than the previous 30 years um and I think it’s always good instead of thinking

About pylons we always read about pylons in the press and it’s always like pylons pylons pylons but I think you can think about undergrounding overg grounding or under the sea it always makes me think of The Wombles so um just of think whatever National Grid say pylons are

The only way which they tell us all the time uh you say no there’s lots of different ways uh in addition um when they are doing all these things like the undergrounding and the overg grounding and so on and so forth we really need natural grids we looking at the most

Modern ways of doing things so for example when they are undergrounding the cables at the moment uh it requires for um 400 kilovolt cable which is the ones that you’ve got proposed and the ones that we’ve got proposed um it requires a trench 120 meters wide um which is I

Think the length of a football pitch and everything this path gets destroyed instead what you could do do is use something called a cable plow which uh literally plows the cable through the ground and requires much less um destruction of Landscapes and habitats um you could also upgrade the

Lines using much more modern conductors uh they are actually doing that in Lincolnshire but it’s very interesting that there’s a company called TS conductor which is backed by national gr Partners it’s American it’s already building these new um conductors cables for power lines um which transport five

To six s more power on the existing pylons so we have been questioning recently why Earth National Grid hasn’t actually used those on any of the cables before building new pylons secondly with those conductors if they were to build new pylons then it requires many many

Fewer and lower pylons so the damage is far less great than the traditional um latis pylons that you can see in the top picture thirdly there’s the offshore grid which we keep going on all about because I’ll explain why in a minute it really is the only solution for um

Lincolnshire North fol suff and essics so pylons proposals you’ve got your squiggly map on the left uh we’ve got our squiggly map on the right um and to be honest we’ve been arguing that east of England is been thrown under a bus in terms of pylons because it’s not

For us this power nearly all of it leaves the region um I think with rough calculation today link Andes is about 8% of what’s being generated in its region at the moment we’re the same it’s up to 8% it’s all transported out of the region uh so we get all the destruction and

None of the benefit and you can see there the size of a pylon that you’ll get relative to a bus so this is what’s happening at the moment in the North Sea um it’s unplanned it’s called the peace Mill or the radial approach and it’s what results in the pylons every single Wind

Farm or interconnector gets offered a connection separately by National Grid uh to a different substation somewhere in land and that substation could be quite a long way in land like norch for example um in our neck of the woods so you can see what a met it is you can see

How destructive is to all the coastlines and to the Inland bits as well actually and the problem is once you’ve got all that power on Shore then you have to get it off off from where it’s brought in and take it down to where it’s needed which is generally to the south of

England or London um and that’s why particular for us that’s ended up in um the Norwich tilby pylons so this map here remember this figure uh costs according to National Grid ESO in 2020 7 billion pounds okay and it costs more than the offshore option because of this

Spiders web that you see of all the cables here um I’m not going to dwell on this slide but it just shows you very quickly what’s going on specific uh wind farms off the coast of uh Lincolnshire and off our Coast as well so you can see there

An awful lot going on out the North Sea and our premise is the power is being generated in the North Sea so keep it in the North Sea for as long as possible pull it offshore on energy islands and take it down to London where it’s needed

Again I’m not going to dwell on this one this is just to show you the number of interconnectors which are planned and an interconnector basically takes power to and from the UK to um the rest of Europe so you’ve got six or so already in place

One of them you’ll all be F familiar with I imagine the Viking link uh which became operational in December and comes into Bea Fen then all the ones in yellow are coming into the East Coast so once again look at that they’re all coming in peaca to Greenfield sites and there’s no

Coordination whatsoever so instead what we want to see is this now this sketch map something I drew um it’s really simple it basically shows a schematic of the dotted lines of the interconnectors coming in from Europe the wind farms Connect into energy islands and then you can see how they

All sort of Link rounding cables coming down towards London where they’re needed and we haven’t drawn Landing points on the map deliberately because we’re saying that we want Brownfield sites investigated rather than this current um useful Greenfield sites that are are being used the middle picture is as part

Of a modular offshore grid a MOG it’s a power plug at C and that’s essentially where three to four wind farms Connect into that one plug to be Consolidated either taken to shore straight away from that plug or um joined into a grid or an interconnector um now this one it

Involves 50% less infrastructure than the map I showed you before that one um and because it involves 50% less infrastructure it’s 2 billion pound cheaper so it cost5 billion pound overall it’s better for the environment because there’s left less infrastructure so if anyone tries to tell you that all

We want to do is um put the cables out of sea uh out at Sea out of mind it’s not the case you reduce the harms of the environment because you reduce the infrastructure self-evidently reduce the harms of communities and actually there are benefits to the network of doing

This um people have often said is this not easier for the Russians to bomb but apparently Gordon National Grid ESO it’s actually better for resilience and for security of the network so this map we understand is being analyzed by n grid ear at the moment it’s part of their review to see

Whether it’s um possible or not we know all the technolog is there so we know it’s quite achievable and uh National Gro and several independent Studies have shown it’s a better way to do things so the planning process um the bits in red are your pylons I call them

The Gins be of wall Poole so at the moment you’re stage one 2024 the non statutary consultation and you have to the 13th of March to get everything sorted for your consultation responses 2025 you’ve got what they say will be your next consultation the statutary consultation that then leads in 2027 to

Your submission of development consent order by National Grid to the planning inspector it is possible it can get rejected if it doesn’t follow certain guidelines um once it is in fact inspected sorry inspected it’s followed by examination and then a final decision decision by an inspector then it goes to

The Secretary of State to make a decision if it goes ahead they’ll be building it in 2029 and it’ll be operational by 2033 so your key stages are really at these consultation phases and then through the examination of the plan submitted by National Grid so in the planning process very

Simply on the left I’ve put National Grid National Grid will be arguing that there’s a desperate need for these pylons that uh it’s critical National priority infrastructure and that there is a strong presumption in favor of overhead lines those two um in quot marks come from The New National policy

Statements that you need to get your heads around um and which colins very familiar with and they are um that is basically what national gr is going to be relying on they will also be talking a lot about mitigation they’ll be saying they can solve all the problems that

Come with the pylons by mitigation so planting new trees uh buying land for Farmers to create new natural habitat all that sort of stuff so that’s what nation grd will be saying we um in our case and probably in yours will be saying on the right hand side that the

Harm from The Proposal is too great and outweighs the benefit benefit um and there are also all sorts of legal flaws so our arguments be around harm to Heritage harm to Landscapes harm to the environment a little bit on health but um not so much in the planning process

But uh we’ll we’ll be keeping an eye on that the treasury greenbook is something that we feel National Grid needs to be following and it’s not uh there are enormous flaws with the consultation process that’s been run uh which I can see with with yours as well to be honest

Um the lack of Alternatives presented we had fewer Alternatives than you’ve had presented although actually um the final buet predetermination exactly what’s happened in your case you have been given a line of pylons down a certain route and it’s not a consultation it’s already it’s decided by National Grid um

And that in consultation law is not acceptable so in our both our consultations actually we’ve got a barrister who wrote us some legal opinions and both said that the consultation process is legally deficient um so we’ll be arguing that as the planning process goes forward um so our strategy as a campaign

Group is Pyon um we are fighting through the planning process and we’re literally just sort of planning over the next few years and have been for the two years planning our case building our evidence um building our analysis and um getting all our ducks in a row ready for the

Final stages we’re saying yes very strongly to an offshore grid that’s both as part of the planning process and in all R PR uh we are lobbying our MP’s left R Center um we’re super Lucky in East Anglia as I think actually you are in Lincolnshire that all our MPS are on

Board fighting for an offshore grid they’ve got a group called offset chaired by S Berard Jenkin um and they are fighting for us um to get that instead of the pylons I know that actually George Freeman MP reached out to one of the MPS in your area last week

So offset we’ll be talking to your your four MPS which is brilliant um we’re trying also to um get off gem to do their job with believe they’re failing at the moment because their job is to make sure um customer bills consumer bills are as low as possible we are

Saying if they ignore the offshore grid option the integrated option then actually they’re adding two billion pounds um to Consumer bills and that’s not acceptable so um they’re also ignoring or or unaware of the TS conductors company owned by National Grid uh which again could be a much

Cheaper solution if they rewire the whole grid rather than um building new pylons uh and finally with are obviously um talking to National Grid and uh trying to persuade them to change their minds and do things properly um how to campaign uh you need uh loads of people

Because it’s a huge area that you’ve got like we’ve got uh you do need Regional coordinators as said earlier and uh you need a huge committee with different expertise but that’s the one good thing about proposal of this size is you do have lots of people with different

Interests along the Route uh and that really helps you to bring together a diverse committee we’ve got a committee of I think about 20 25 people um and I think we’re up to about 60 65 Regional coordinators uh we’ve done loads of leaflet drops I think we dropped 20,000

Leaflets last summer for the second consultation um and we have a sort of model where our kind of branding is all done centrally um and then individual groups can do what they want with that branding they can print out their own pla cards and Banners they can distribute leaflets they can organize

Meetings um and then the sort of central group try to support them so we’ve got everything from t-shirts to caps to cycling shirts to Banners To placards posters the whole lot so uh people can order that off the website um and it’s brilliant actually if you drive through

East Anglia now there are these placards everywhere um and even ITV Anglia said once they said they love driving around the countryside because whenever they’re out doing stories they’re constantly reminded of the pylon story so that’s the people in placards um pounds pounds pounds um our Bara um it absolutely

Brilliant and he’s not charging us full rate but uh it adds up we’ve had four legal opinions from him we’re going to need another one this summer um and we’re going to need a lot of his time over the examination so you will and we’re just appointing um landscape and

Heritage experts as well so you just need to get out and fund raise we’ve done a lot of Citizen surveys uh we did one last year where we asked people to um fill in a survey to show what they thought their most valued viewpoints and landcapes were and that’s because

National Grid said they were going to assess 40 um landscape viewpoints uh we said that’s not enough long 180 kilometers we actually got 580 submissions all with evidence showing why it’s a really important landscape Viewpoint we’ve currently got Heritage survey so we’ve got the historic inom checklist in a survey and we’re asking

People to look at any building near them and to sort of describe the setting of it now and answer the questions about how the pylons might actually affect it um if they go ahead and we did two surveys to counter National Grids questionnaire um in both summmer consultations to ask people what they

Thought a of the consultation um and the way it was run the information presented to them and B what they thought of the pylons so we then had our own evidence about what people thought because you don’t get to see what people submit to National Grid um going on around clockwise

Analysis and evidence you’ll need to get together a team of people that love reading through all na documents understanding what off G’s up to and basically building your case for the consultation we in the first consultation submitted our own 18 page document looking at all different aspects and last summer we submitted

Loads of documents um as you can see from uh legal documents to assessments of their specific reports Birds hotspots priority habitats bird strikes uh the Landscapes the Heritage culture report um all sorts of things so um it’s really time consuming to get this done properly but sort of the sooner you get ahead

With this in this consultation the more you can start to build evidence for the next stages uh finally um You probably getting there already but you need to get set up with all the things like MailChimp to spread the word um you’ve got Facebook set up already I definitely

Get on to Twitter LinkedIn is not a bad place to be I’m on all of those quite regularly um if you are on Twitter um we are pylons e Anglia um and print load of leaflets and get out there and spread the word uh so it’s not a done deal ntional

Grid will make you think on the radio when they talk and the television and when you go to the drop in events they’ll make you think it’s all decided it’s a done deal um it’s not they do have to jump through a load of planning hurdles um they will be liberal with the

Truth so don’t necessarily believe what they say um they’ve told us for example several times in fact their stories change as things go forward but they have told us all the time that they have to build pylons they have no choice yet at the same time they’ve buil a proposal

Going through in East Anglia to build celink which is subc um and they never mentioned then how pylons are sort of obligatory and in fact they rejected a pilon’s option uh which was cheaper to choose to build seink so basically take what they say with the pinch assault and

Do your own research um and I think that’s me done so I’ll will stop sharing I will give host back back to um and find search for Charlie now Charlie more make host there you go Charlie you should be host now oh great brilliant that was fantastic thank you very much

Fant thank you rattle through very fast but happy to take questions afterwards thank you there’s so much information there was there was just loads it was really really helpful one thing was the slides weren’t moving through so I’d like to share those later if that’s okay if you wouldn’t mind sharing them with

Me then I can put them if you would you be happy for us to put them on our website or however online people can see them later is that okay y oh you’re muted now yes sorry sorry I couldn’t unmute myself um yeah that’s absolutely fine I can um

Email across and yeah definitely put them on Facebook Etc thank you very much yes so I’ll put those on our website put them on Facebook if I can do that as well so everyone can refer back to them and of course if and I’m also going to

Put the recording of this meeting online so you could go through the slides and listen to Rosie at the same time if you wanted to do that another time um and now I’ll hand over to counselor Colin Davey who’s gonna kindly tell us about the council position good evening everyone and thank

You Charlie and thank you Rosie and um I think I’ll just start that by just saying that Rosie and I have been working together for for some time now um we knew this proposal was going to come uh the County Council um prepared the ground we we brought forward our

Policy position statement in December uh which the executive board of which I’m a member uh adopted unanimously that makes it very clear that we will not support any above ground new infrastructure in Lincolnshire that’s so that means any new pylons are not supported we will object to them we will

Oppose them uh and that is our formal position and I will continue to ensure we do everything we can to uh to help and support our communities along the whole line of this route um Rosie and I have also met with Sir John Hayes um MP for the deepings who is

Coordinating the Lincoln cheer MPS in their opposition to the proposals and working with sir Berard Jenkin who chairs the East Anglia group to make sure there is a coordinated approach from Lincolnshire uh all the way down to the temps uh to make sure that we’re getting that message through

To central government you’ve probably heard the Prime Minister talk about these proposals for National infrastructure as British pylons they’ve got nothing to do with Britain um you know this is all about as Rosie has said power going to London and the southeast and places like Lincolnshire getting all

The impacts with none of the benefits whatsoever uh over the last few years we’ve seen two very major infrastructure projects come through Lincolnshire the Viking link and Triton n both of which have been buried underground originally tritan n had a proposal for substations and pylons and the County Council put our

Foot on the applicants and we made it clear that would not be acceptable and as a result they took that away um and we ended up with those cables being buried what you need to also understand in terms of the substation proposals is there are five giant offshore wind farms

That will all need to come on Shore if uh this py on line is consented those substations that substation complex outside Alford will then require for each of those additional offshore wind farms a converter substation to be joined to the substation proposal so you’re going to see a massive expansion of substations

In that area to convert the power before it goes into the National Grid substation what you won’t be aware of even though I’ve mentioned it on look North is that we’re also dealing with an application for for a giant subsea cable to come from Scotland all the way down

To the Lincolnshire coast and then be transmitted into the substation at Alford as well that is to carry all the onshore wind from Scotland which we’re currently paying over2 200 million pounds a year to dump off grid uh into the grid and if they can bring power of

That kind of volume by a subc cable I’m very clear the offshore option is viable and the only real option for Lincoln sh what I would also go on and say is that um the the company talks about um the onshore option the Pyon option has being

The cheapest option it is not the cheapest option uh Because by the time they’ve ruined our landscape wrecked our tourism industry and devalued all your properties along the whole route of the uh of the pylon line and that’s not just those people who’ve had letters but anyone I would say that lives within

Three to five kilometers of the Pyon line will have a lot of um value on their property Compensation bill in my mind is going to run into billions so it will not be the cheapest option the other thing which is critically important is of course that the County Council is bidding for the

Lincolnshire Coast to be a UNESCO world heritage site because of its importance to bird migratory routs one of the most important routs in the world um pilot and birds don’t mix as you all know so that is in itself going to cause a number of objections there is a huge amount of

Work to be done the Cy Council will oppose these proposals and we will certainly be looking at landscape Witnesses of our own to justify our reasons for opposing the scheme uh what I will be doing is calling a meeting of all the interested parties such as Nash

Natural England the the Ws a the wildlife trust Etc to try and get a common position on this proposal the most important thing for all of you listening to this call tonight is be vocal um and whilst your MPS are opposing the scheme make sure

You write to them and make it clear how much you need them to do on your behalf and make sure that they understand there is a ground swell of public opinion against this proposal also go to the consultation events that are planned and make your feelings known encourage your friends

Don’t go to all of them because it’s not right that you just turn up at every event but make sure there’s a coordinated group at each event giving the National Grid team real hell over the proposals but the big job for for the first the first task you really have

Is to get all your friends to write letters of objection before the proposal uh submissions close in March I’m going to share with Charlie the um County Council position statement so could be put on the website so you understand that we have a formal planning position against the proposals and you’ll be able

To use some of the words within that and I’m available my email address is in the chat so please drop me a line um and I will um talk to Charlie and and give us some further advice on maybe things we can do to help get the campaign really

Swinging uh in terms of media and on a national basis the most important thing as I said is I’ve been fighting stuff for 20 odd years as a counselor I started my career fighting onshore Wind forms uh it feels like Groundhog Day to me that we’re having to go through all

This again because government in London just simply hasn’t got an energy policy that delivers secure and affordable energy to our nation and we’re all going to have to pay the price yet again for their incompetence um so I’ll happily pick up any questions or thoughts but you know

This is great to have our first meeting I’m pleased to be with you and I will always be with you during this campaign that’s great thank you Colin that’s really great so that was quite stirring anyone got any questions or comments for either Rosie or Callin or

Just something you’d like to say or share floor is open yes Simon hi there hello everybody can you hear me perfect I was just wondering through this process um and I’ve only been involved for a very short period of time since this was unveiled about 10 days ago

Probably um the National Grid release the quotes that they get for these works the estimates the submission plans where they um ask for various companies for pricing on these projects because the pricing that they’re throwing out just seem to be numbers plucked from anywhere and it doesn’t make any sense

At all by their own documentation I mean the the um Viking link they said was 475 kilometers long and in their own words it cost 1.7 billion to lay that cable so when you work that out it’s three and a half million per kilometer you know RC

Route is less than 100 kilometers it actually works out to 90 kilometers if you go a mile offshore and that works out to about 3155 million pounds which is a million miles away from 9 billion which is the number they throw out to say oh we can’t do it by

C does anyone ever get those numbers those quotes those documents I mean Colin do you wantan to go first or should I go oh Colin’s mute so I’ll go while un mute um yes so with ours we Tau to shreds their first documentation the analysis the assumptions the lack of

Explanation the lack of detail the circular arguments it’s quite extraordinary what we found in that um there is I cannot see how they got anywhere near 9 billion for their offshore costings Viking links um lower capacity you’d need one two you’d need three or four Viking links to do um the

Capacity that you need but then as you say it’s three or four times longer so um so no they will offis skate they won’t give the details they will murk things as much as they can um we have said to off gem several times you got to

Look at this and off gem there’s another reason I’ve got an issue with off gem is they will not look at the um methodology used by by um National Grid so no I would try and tear that to shreds of what you you have got I do freedom information requests actually it’s eir

From National Grid um I would get in touch with off chair if you’ve got queries just point of comparison what they call an offshore option for us it isn’t offshore it starts at Norwich but anyway that’s round about four billion um and that would be give or take 200

Kilometers so there’s absolutely no way yours can be 9 10 billion and I’ve been trying to find the paperwork in your um link ch’s documents if you’ve got the actual page in the document that’s in um I’d like to see roughly how they get there it’s pretty cheap to lay cables

Offshore the expensive bit is the converter stations on land I think they’re about half a billion each um but even so um I think you should be able to probably F pick holes in arguments left right and Center certainly we could so I would start doing that now Colin yes and

Simon just to reassure you National Grid came to see the executive board at the County Council just before the um details were made public and um the executive board has demanded that National Grid bring to the County Council the full option appr business cases against greenbook treasury

Principles for all three options and um they promised to do so um I’m skeptical that they will and on the basis of what Rosie and I have discussed um but we are going to hold them to that because they made that promise and we record our meetings as

Well that’s fabulous thank you I mean I just guess the glaring point is that if they’re using the cost of going offshore as the excuse for not going offshore then that is absolutely their most vulnerable point because you can argue to the cows come home whether you should

Have pylons or whether you shouldn’t whether you should um put underland cables in and all the effort that has to go into that in expense and disruption but when their argument which appears to be black and white we can’t go offshore because of the cost if we can under undermine their cost

Claims then surely at some point someone’s got to start to listen to us I totally agree with you Simon I think you make good points there um and for me the key thing is that we need to keep banging that drum and making that argument uh and doing it in a very

Businesslike way um and you know my planning officers at the County Council will be making sure every step of the way we check and double check everything and uh you know it won’t change our opposition to the proposals um but you know they’ve come up with the dirtiest

Greatest big pylons they could think of they have smaller pylons they could use which would carry the same cables but they didn’t offer those to lincolshire um so you know this is as far as I’m concerned a trashing of our landscape and the dumping on our County of

Something we don’t want don’t need and there are better options and um you know we’re going to keep keep making that case and you know the more PE the more people in the public who get involved with this and make it a big issue we’ve got elections coming up in a year’s time

Well within the year for Parliament um this is you know the failure of government energy policy over 20 years has led us to all this rubbish we’ve got a regulator that doesn’t regulate a government that doesn’t understand energy and everybody who lives in places like Lincoln share and then you know

Deprived communities up and down our country are paying the bill for all this nonsense this obsession with 2050 um hasn’t been thought through and no one’s regulating the process Lely thank you just one more point I don’t want to steal anyone’s time but are we involving people um like

The countryside programs on um on the BBC and um the one show and you know all of these things and like Chris packam we’ve literally been on everything we’ve done country f one show we’ve done radio today program several times we’ve done oh God everything politics live a couple of weeks ago um

Yeah we’ve been in the Ft the Australian National times and New York Times so literally we blit the Press we had a year of Brits sorry that you calling someone speak but yeah the pr all over it they’re fully aware of the issue they’ve got to grips of the offshore grid as the

Um the sort of the scenario so they know they will always try and portray you and us as nimes don’t want on pylons and that backyard but we are literally almost not talking about pylons a lot of the time we’re just talking about the solution which is offshore

Grid so we want to replicate that that kind of you know pushing out to the Press here as well so those particular ones you mentioned s and I haven’t heard anyone mention any of those particular ones so um what we really need is more people coming on board to help do that

Kind of thing you know contact the press and everything so I’m gonna suggest Charlie that I have a a neighbor in my Village who might be quite useful to us who’s got a big public profile um so I’m gonna I’m gonna ask my friend Anu to re

M if she would be a figurehead for the campaign so I’ll talk to her tomorrow and ask her to talk to you if she’s um able to do it okay thank you we want as many people as we can supporting the campaign putting time in so please do

Consider bring some time if you have some this anybody else to say anything I can see Rosie shared the slides there to everyone you can see them now um as I say I’ll put them on sorry it was a disaster because when I share I can’t do anything else so I

Can’t hear anyone see anyone or let anyone in so I’m didn’t even know they weren’t sharing or weren’t moving through sorry about that no don’t worry resie we’re really grateful that you put that together for us and that you’re giving your time you’ve also I know you’ve already been answering loads of

Emails from us you know giving us L of advice already in a week you’ve given us loads of time already and you know I know it’s sad you know that you’ve had to have this experience in your county but we are getting the benefit of you being two years ahead in your campaign

So we’re really grateful definitely and we really want you to be able to sort of benefit from that rather than Reinventing the wheel makes no sense at all if you’re starting from scratch so thank so I know that something that has come up a lot I’ve noticed on the

Facebook page is how a lot of talk about how lots lots of communities probably don’t know about this and how um you know there are lots of different pockets of communities spread around our beautiful County and kind of getting the word out so one thing I saw on Facebook

Somebody had mentioned about the holiday makers you know the people um because it’s this time of year and we have so many holiday makers and people who obviously businesses rely on those holiday makers that maybe they’re not aware because it’s you know I’m guessing people in skes have not been notified

About this campaign this route proposed route because it’s not close enough to them National good to have notified them so getting the word out and you don’t have you know you don’t have to be you know know all the details to be able to talk to people about it you know just

Directing them to the website directec them to the Facebook page also I know that not everybody’s online just kind of letting people know because we’re going to be talking about this now for years so starting starting to let people know could I add Charlie that um I I serve 17

Parishes in terms of my area that I represent a county and I know some of my colleagues are on the call this evening uh I’ve written to all my Parish councils asking them to pass a resolution in opposition to the proposals so I think all counselors on the route if

You are speak to them all individually Charlie and ask them to do the same I’m sure they’ll be more than willing to help you and um and if we can get every Parish Council along the whole line of the rout it doesn’t really matter that certain residents haven’t been contacted

Initially it just sends that very strong message back to government and back to um the planning inspectorate that there is total opposition to The Proposal thank you do you know is there a Lincolnshire Association of Parish councils local councils that could be contacted centrally there is okay there is

Absolutely and again I’ll pass that information to you Charlie thank you thank you one thing I’m curious thing you could do oh go on Sorry Charlie no I was gonna say a couple of things one is you could get um car stickers just to get those like dropped in Village Shops

And so on and so forth the pub for people to pick up um leaflets even if people just have something they can print at home to take and again put in the v shop or the local library that kind of thing um and if people have the

Time and energy to just have Village meetings literally see when the church is available The Village Hall the pub doesn’t really matter we had meetings in all of those um even if you just say look I’m gonna meet you on the pub on Thursday night just come and have a chat

About it all that sort of thing works really well just to get people engaged locally thank you that’s a great idea and something I was wondering about that I haven’t looked into as yet because we only been doing this for about 10 days and I haven’t had time time but what

I’ve been wondering about is you know that that um priority of getting as many submissions as we can into the public consultation before March the 13th which is the deadline um does that I mean does it have to be a lengthy response or people can can people just write I don’t

Want the pil on no I would suggest you have one group focusing on your technical response so doing all the analysis and working out what you’re going to stay as a group so you have something really solid going in um for your whole sort of next few next few

Stages um and what you could probably do is get something like MailChimp and then you can set up within that a standard email it goes through to people all they need to do is press send that will go straight through to Nash you’ve done the wording form they edit if they want to

Um that’s the quickest easiest way to get people to do things or if you’ve got people that you can’t get on email then either do a leaflet with um a postcard they cut off the bottom and send a postcard in um or QR codes that sort of

Thing so no they they can say what they want bear in mind National GD they’ll kind of they’ll ignore what people say we know that they don’t really care what you say so actually just get the sheer numbers in um and then make sure you’ve got one with the substance the analysis

The in-depth stuff and then you know of course you’ve got all Colin’s team and the County Council doing the in-depth stuff as well which is brilliant so you’re really lucky that you’ve got Colin doing that already and that as Conor says we’ve been talking for about

A year haven’t we I think so um so um he’s been doing brilliant job of galvanizing the MPS and I know Sir John wrote to the minister least once last year didn’t he and the others did recently so um so there’s a lot of groundwork being put in even before you

L got your letters through the door which is quite nice and you’re being really robust I know with National Grid so um that’s good too brilliant so yeah getting those numbers into the consultation so so I was thinking um you know somebody said one of my neighbors

Said to me oh I’ve signed the petition and I was like oh that’s brilliant please also do you know submit to the consultation said well is that the same thing and I was like oh no it’s not the same thing you know it’s great that people are signing the petition but we

Need to get the submissions to the official consultation but I think and she said oh people won’t want to put that much work in so I want I’d like to get the message out there doesn’t have to be a lot of work you know just to submit something quickly agree agree it

And go on I was gonna say will National Grid have to say how many responses they got in yeah they will yeah and um also people don’t have to fill in their their boring form because they can respond by email or post however they want to so

There’s no obligation to fill in the form um and if people are filling in the form then they should just be careful just make sure you got some guidance in there so might be you put at the beginning of every box you answer I object to this proposal even if you are

Then saying um there are issues in my local area with Heritage or or Wildlife whatever it might be so um there’d be kind of two sets of guidance one for people want to fill in the form and one for people that just literally send an I object email thank

You anyone else want to put their hand up while we’re here we’ve got Rosie and Colin here yes Nicola if you click on that now I’ve clicked to say you if you can click unmute and then we’ll be able to hear you there we go that that work try again good evening

Now the main thing that is the fact is that we we are all in shock because we have only had 10 days notice 11 days notice now why have we had to have our information two years after the other counties oh to be fair it’s a different thing we’re a different proposal and

We’re two consultations down the line so that makes sense that makes sense seems ridiculously short time yeah we were similar we found out I mean people in the back ground knew like colins’s known for ages about this one so no we we were in exactly the same position

People got the letters and they told you got like seven eight weeks to respond okay I understand thank thank you thank very much I guess it’s no surprise that National good are not giving us a long time to respond exactly get the numbers up so I need to get the word

Out oh oh CLA do you have your hand up sorry there we go if you click on there unmute go oh can’t hear you I think I think there’s a problem with your microphone we can’t hear you you want to put a message in the chat yeah thank you uh here we go

Oh yes sorry there’s a message there for me can you put the website up again what is the website you are yes I can do that it’s no .co.uk double check myself there no links right it questioning myself now that’s right obviously we will have more of these Zoom meetings and

Um we can bring questions again next time I’m just double checking the yes no plan up. UK I’ve got it right hoay okay I just wait for Claire’s message to come oh what is the first line of defense then from paie are we saying everyone should email to

Object if that’s so are we putting that in the Facebook group so what we’re saying is just then we were just saying that um National Grid have their public consultation period open until the 13th of March and for now we were saying that the priority is to get as many people as

Possible to submit to that consultation and as Rosie said which I didn’t know before we don’t have to use their boring form that they’ve released we can just you can be an email um or a letter or you know um so saying that we that we

Object so and I would definitely take on that advice that Rosie gave that as a group as a campaign group we’ll be working on a more technical detailed response but as individual members of the public we can put in our own submission saying I don’t want these pinons here for whatever reasons you

Have what I suggest you do for now is put a holding note on the Facebook page and say that the committee is coming together and that within whatever you decide say two weeks before the end of the consultation you will be supplying uh guidance on how to fill in the form

For people who want to there will be a standard email that people can press send because by then hopefully you’ll have MailChimp or whatever you use um and that basically you’re working on it no perhaps no one should do anything yet there’s no mediate rush so hold your

Phone and keep watching the Facebook page um because there’s no point doing it immediately so I’d say as long as people aren’t wearing holiday for the last couple of weeks just just spend your time getting ready and everyone can know that yeah great thank you we will definitely do that that’s great advice

And so we’ll put a message on the Facebook and we can get hold of MailChimp that’s a free service I know so we can get hold of that no problem um yes but I think you know asking our about people that we know in the county neighbors friends and doesn’t have to be

One per household you know every adult in one house can submit really get those numbers up and it would be great if when at the end of this consultation period when whenever it is at National have to report how many submissions they’ve got if we get a really high number of

Thousands of people they’ll know straight away they’ve got a fight on their hands you know we’re not just going to sit back and just you know go go ahead with their proposed plans we don’t want the p and there’s a better alternative we can make that point yes John you click on

Unmute AB I’m on uh I I think one of the most important things is to get the momentum up and keep it going it’s we’re we have a tendency to let things drop off in this County we Rave about it to start with and then it all dies off and if you can

Keep the momentum going then you’ll get further than we sometimes normally do if that makes sense yeah yeah it’s really important you’re in for the Long Haul it’s just kind of you need sort spurts of energy and then kind of like take breaks in between because you go all out for eight weeks

Doing this and then you know you’ve got another one coming next year so kind of uh yeah it’s at least a three four Year campaign potentially go will be three or four years older by then w we exactly well me and Colleen will [Laughter] anyway and I saw that in someone had

Posted on the Facebook group today I think it was yesterday that in Montgomery share they successfully fought the pylon scheme there that National Grid were putting forward so it can be done so if it can be done there then why can’t we do it here we’re not a we’re not a county

That’s traditionally got pylons have we got any pylons at all very much I can’t think of many really oh unmute con there a yes there’s a few Pyon lines but not many um and these are the super industrial scale ones um so they they will be very noticeable and um you know

I use a planning term um that we’ve we won on a number of um onshore windfarm cases because the inspector came to the conclusion that tall vertical structures in flat open Landscapes harm the landscape more than anything else so should be refuse however this that was a local those were local planning matters

This is a national infrastructure project that both both the main political parties will want to deliver because they’re both wedded to The Net Zero ambition um so um and I’m very clear that if they have a they get a pile online and they ruin this side of Lincolnshire what will come afterwards

Will be more solar farms and onshore wind turbines and they’ll ruin what’s left so you know this is going to be an important B if we’re going to protect our side of the county and preserve it for future Generations we’re all going to have to put our shoulder to the

Wheel yeah and I think you’re quite right in saying that um they do stand out more on flat land I was around a of axone the other week um cow way and the pylons in there stick out like saw thumbs it’s so flat and they look twice as tall because of the the

Landscape yeah if you think about it Lincolnshire is mostly flat and like East Anglia most of our highest points are about 60 M so that’s some a pylons 50 mters so they really do stand out you can’t hide them only if you put them under waterer exactly anybody else like to

Yeah CLA Williamson in the chat that’s interesting because the Press told me 10 million for the um subc um someone tonight said n billion but you’ve just been told on the webinar subc is four and a half billion have you so it’s weird isn’t it what what

Figures are they quoting um is the gentleman still here who found the nine billion do you have the document that’s in he’s gone but oh Simon is it yeah I’ve pick to un mute um the N billion was reported by the lincolnite or the Lincoln press that Mak they took

It they mentioned it and then the National Grid said oh we can’t possibly do that because it would cost too much money and they said it’s going to cost n billion and then they said it cost 12 billion if we went over land um I’ve

Just clearly they got no idea how big a billion is no exactly the plucking fig out the it sounds it sounds like the Press have either been told a different number or got it wrong because they definitely told me the 10 billion as well Colin do

You what were you told as a councel do you know what the subc was um they never gave us a figure I think they quoted as at um 9 million billion sorry for the subc proposition that doesn’t S which I just laughed at I said that I have actually contacted the press

That did the article to ask the name of the person that gave them the information so he’s on my radar to track him down because the only way that you get to the bottom of these things is held holding the individuals who spout this nonsense to account you have to

Just keep going and and dig it up somewhere and you’re either going to find out the telling the truth and they’ve got documents to prove it or you going to prove that they’re not telling the truth which sort of undermines everything else that they’re saying as well I think you would be um

It’d be very useful if you go along to one of the consultation events in either b or Alford or um LA and um they’ll all be there all these people will be there so um go and give them a good grilling they’ll be very pleased to see me then

They’ll be very pleased to see you yeah they they love these events very much don’t they but no that’s right just keep asking asking questions and work out what they think on webinar stated percentage Yeah okay so definitely to get to the bottom of what their offshore

Cost is I can’t say it being nine or 10 billion so that sounds like um total misinformation four billion might be more like it and but even that will need to be challenged absolutely well your man for that good could you also challenge could you also ask them why they I think

They’re saying the pylons are about two billion aren’t they but I don’t know how they’ve got two billion because you’ve got 143 kilometers of pylons I think yeah whereas we’ve got we’ve got 180 kilometers pylons and ours they’re about they’re under a billion so um we’ve got

More pylons for half the cost and you’ve got less pylons for double the cost so it’d be really interesting to find out what’s going on and interrogate that um Simon do you mind send me an email as well because it’ be quite useful to I

Can maybe sh you the analysis we did at the first consultation that might show might be some stuff in there that you can um use point we need to I think the other point we need to ask them um obviously now there’s going to be no

Steel made in the UK that going to be able to make these pylons um we ought to be asking them what the carbon cost is uh bearing in mind the subc cable there’s virtually no carbon cost compared to um the carbon cost of making steeling China transporting it all the

Way to the UK um and then putting it up so there is a carbon cost for having pylons that uh sort of defeats the 2050 ambition doesn’t it yeah okay so it looks like it’s more likely to be 4.5 billion suby six billion underground and saying one for

The so sounds whatever they’ve told in the webinar is completely different from what they’ve told the Press which is really weird um so there’s a lot and that’s another question to ask them when you see them at these dropping events is why Earth they turn in to press one thing and you

Guys something different because that’s super confusing I think they’re just living in a time I mean you go back 20 years ago and they could make whatever claims they wanted and we could we didn’t have the technology to question them or get together and I think they still think

They’re living in that time where they say what want and just go unquestioned and unchallenged and we’re not there anymore it’s no all the information all the information is out there if you’re prepared to do the research and find it you’re absolutely right Simon um and of

Course you know we’ll end up doing the job that off gem should be doing you know off gem should be really regulating this proposal to make sure it’s a value for taxpayers money and it delivers the best outcomes for everybody and the best outcome is not trashing intership the

Best outcome is a a subc bed cable that takes the power to Tilbury where it’s needed and avoids grief not just in Lincoln Shire but in East Anglia as well yeah absolutely I’m gonna have to go in a second because I’m running out of battery I didn’t want to just disappear

But thank you very much for everybody and I’m sure we’ll all meet again thank you we’ll be in contact Simon thanks so much you know what on that point about um you know in the past perhaps people wouldn’t have questioned things so much I think I didn’t realize until I got

Very interested in the National Grid 10 days ago that um the national I assume having National in the name is really deceptive because I thought it’s like National Health Service you know so it’s they’re doing you know they’re looking after things for us but that’s not true

At all it’s a private company just making loads of profit and and even the share holders aren’t all aren’t even in in this country some of them you know so it’s it’s a shame they’re called National Grid because I think it makes them seem theine than they are I would

Also say Charlie that you know politics has collided with private profit these days so you’re absolutely right National Grid is a private company shareholder company um but there are lots and lots of MPS of all parties who have positions on Boards of renewable energy companies and green companies who will all be

Pushing to get these pylons built because it’s part of their rational for existing and continuing to get subsidies from the taxpayer so you know the it’s a murky old world out there is what I’m saying so you know we’ll be very clear Lincoln share understands it’s a murky Old World

Um and politically we will be doing what we can to shine a light on it to help help everybody but ultimately the strength of public opinion is going to be the one of the most important factors and as Rosie’s already said the thousands of people in East angria who

Who have objected to these proposals um you know if we can get the same kind of ground swelling lincol share it sends a very strong message to government whoever’s in charge in London that they really do need to think carefully about what they do in terms of their decision

Making absolutely on the environmental point the as I understand it the um integrated offshore grid would be better environmentally as well I’m an environmentalist I want green energy I want us to be to perform well environmentally and the the integrated offshore grid would be better for the environment and takes 50% of

Infrastructure so it’s it’s the right thing around as well as being cheap that’s absolutely right Charlie I’ve always supported offshore Renewables and in preference to harm on the the landscape so you know we’ve always supported the offshore sector that’s why we’ve worked with them to deliver tritan

N and and out of dowsing and um the Viking link projects into the UK grid but you know people shouldn’t take our support for things to uh to mean that they can walk all over us and do what they want um you know so I’m very clear

We need a an energy policy that is a balance of things that is properly secure and that is Affordable for consumers and business and at the moment we’ve got none of those things I’m afraid okay well I feel really motivated from this Zoom um I hope everybody else

Does oh yes we’ve got question here great Pam please click unmute on your screen can you see that Pam hi um just a just a little positive note really I’m from Chapel St Leonards I’m the chair of the parish council and it’s it’s nothing on this scale

Whatsoever but we have fought on three occasions um a MK a huge mass that was um a 5G ready Mas uh that they wanted to put on the Village Green um and I I know it’s much smaller than this but again you feel as though you’re fighting something on a national level that

You’ve not got your little voice um that you know it’s very hard to be heard but on three occasions we fought it uh there were three appeals to the Secretary of State and we we still haven’t got them Mas and I think we do want connectivity um and exactly the same

That we want this we want the energy but it’s how it’s done we did we did get it through and it was agreed and it was the aesthetic and it wasn’t the right place so it we felt like David and Goliath at the time but sometimes it does still work so um

I’m certainly behind this any way uh that we can again okay brilliant Thank you Pam and David won didn’t he so that’s the reason for that story David yes thank you great to hear anybody else I feel like we’re coming to a natural end to the meeting okay thanks

Everybody so much for coming and huge thanks to Rosie and to Colin for sharing your expertise and you know giving us hope and explaining what we need to do next so um and thanks to everyone for coming and please spread the word and please offer bit of time if you can to

Help us because at the moment there’s Peter there um there the three of us scrabbling away all day messages on from Facebook Messenger um so um we really do need more help okay thanks everybody um take care look forward to seeing you all again soon thank you thank you thank you thank

You I think they um yeah did a leave one there She just put thank you do you do that thank you