Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, what steps his Department is taking to introduce statutory turnaround times for consents teams handling compulsory purchase and necessary wayleave applications, to reduce end-to-end project timelines.

The government is assessing how it can streamline land access, rights and consent processes to speed up electricity network deployment and published a consultation which ran from 8 July to 2 September 2025. The consultation proposed a raft of changes to these processes. We expect to publish our response in the coming quarter, setting out the direction of travel in this area.