Local Plans must better support delivery of energy storage and infrastructure

In response to the draft National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), Lichfields, a UK planning and development consultancy, has set out an approach to plan-making aimed at improving alignment between planning, grid capacity and delivery timescales for energy infrastructure.

The consultancy’s Advanced Energy Group says policy support for energy infrastructure is now well established. The challenge lies in how Local Plans identify, assess and safeguard sites in a way that reflects grid connection opportunities and realistic delivery programmes.

Lichfields’ suggested approach is being termed an Integrated Energy Allocation model, under which Local Plans would assess specific energy sites through a targeted call for sites submission exercise rather than relying on broad areas of search. Sites would be put forward accompanied by proportionate, parameters-based evidence, allowing physical scale and environmental effects to be examined in the Plan-making process without fixing detailed layouts or technology at that early stage.

Where accepted through Local Plan examination, sites would be allocated for energy infrastructure and safeguarded from incompatible development. Detailed specification would be approved later, closer to construction, reflecting grid connection timing and technological change. The approach would sit alongside continued policy support for energy proposals on non-allocated sites where capacity becomes available.

Anthony Greally, Senior Director and Advanced Energy Lead at Lichfields, said: “The draft NPPF gives clear support to renewable energy development and energy infrastructure, but the Local Plan process could play a much more effective role in its delivery. Our ideas might be somewhat radical and would require changes to legislation alongside changes to the Plan-making process, but they are worthy of further consideration. The ultimate goal is a Local Plan process that better reflects how energy developers identify sites, and how projects are connected, financed and delivered.

“Providing earlier certainty through a planning permission in principle, and not just a site allocation, while deferring detailed design, could reduce unnecessary early applications. For such a system to work, however, would require NESO to regard these allocations in the same way it does a traditional planning permission when it awards grid connection dates”

The Integrated Energy Allocation model has been published as a discussion paper to inform debate on how planning can better support the delivery of energy storage and wider energy infrastructure.

For more information, visit https://lichfields.uk/blog/2026/january/30/from-policy-aspiration-to-delivery-rethinking-the-role-of-local-plans-for-energy-infrastructure