PM Backs Calls for Community Energy Priority Access To Grid

Andy Burnham has backed island calls for community energy companies to be given priority access to the national grid.  

Speaking in the Commons for the first time the new Prime Minister said he supported my efforts to get community windfarms first in the queue for connections to the grid. 

Since being elected in 2024, I have been pressing for reform of grid connections and for community-owned companies to be pushed up the queue for connections to the 1.8GW Minch interconnector which links the Western Isles to the mainland and where capacity is currently taken up by commercial windfarm plans for the islands. 

Welcoming the Prime Minister to the Commons on Tuesday evening, I also invited the Prime Minister to visit the Western Isles. 

There are good flight connections from Manchester to the Western Isles, where he will see that we have the highest concentration of community-owned wind farms in the country.

I told the Prime Minister: “If he really wants to fulfil the potential of the energy transition, these communities should be given priority access to grid connections, and he should use the muscle of GB Energy to give communities and local councils the ability to buy shares in renewable schemes anywhere in their area. It is devolutionary, it is revolutionary, and the template for how to do it is in Na h-Eileanan an Iar.” 

The Prime Minster responded: “That was put very well, and this is exactly the agenda that I have been talking about from the Dispatch Box today. All parts of the UK need to have control over basic services, and I look forward to working with my honourable friend to support what he is saying.” 

We know in the Western Isles that getting community energy onto the grid brings in a steady income locally that can be used to tackle issues like fuel poverty and gives communities the wherewithal to make decisions on what their own priorities are.  

That fits the Prime Minister’s own agenda for more devolution and local decision-making, and I’d welcome his support in getting the regulations changed so that we can put communities first onto the grid.

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