Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, what assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of community benefit levels provided by NSIP-scale solar developers (a) relative to the profits generated and (b) in comparison with non-NSIP solar developments.

We believe that, where communities do the country a service by hosting clean energy infrastructure, they should benefit from it directly.

No formal analysis has been carried out to compare the community benefit funds of proposed NSIP projects with those of non-NSIP projects. However, we are aware that the current voluntary provision can be variable and inconsistent.

That is why we recently published a working paper proposing to make it mandatory for developers to contribute to community benefit funds. A government response setting out next steps will be published shortly.