Vattenfall’s Norfolk Vanguard Granted Consent

We are delighted to announce that Vattenfall’s Norfolk Vanguard DCO has today been granted consent for the second time. The Ardent Team have been providing land services and advice on this DCO (along with the sister project Norfolk Boreas), for the last 5 years.

The consent journey has not been smooth by any means. With a decision originally programmed for December 2019, this was delayed for 6 months due to the general election, and delayed further by 1 month in May 2020 to allow for Covid-19 impact, with an initial consent awarded in July 2020. This was subsequently quashed in February 2021. Congratulations to the whole team involved, in particular the Vattenfall consenting team for their resilience on this journey. This consent now compliments the December consent for Norfolk Boreas.

Vattenfall is proposing two Offshore Windfarms situated approximately 45km off the eastern Norfolk coast. With a combined power production of 3.6 GW these projects will provide enough power to provide 3.9Million homes!

Ardent were originally instructed to conduct the land referencing process, deal with the formal landowner consultation and produce the BoR, Land Plans, Crown Land Plans, Special Category Land Plans, and Cost Estimate for the DCO application. We also made significant contributions to the production of the SoR and Consultation report.

The DCO application for Norfolk Vanguard was submitted in June 2018 with the DCO for Norfolk Boreas submitted in June 2019. Ardent continued to support the Norfolk Vanguard project through the examination stage and hearings, acting as property expert, responding to land issues, written representations, and written questions. Alongside this Ardent were also working to prepare the application documents for Norfolk Boreas.

Ardent were heavily involved in the optioneering stage of the Norfolk Vanguard project, and advised on numerous landowner change requests that were received to the cable route. This was supported by a cost estimate to advise on compensation risks and general project risks.  We were able to advise on the Heads of Terms (HoTs), for option agreements, resulting in over 80% of the affected landowners signing up along the 60KM cable route. Ardent also led on the negotiations to acquire the main site for the new substation.

The Ardent team, led by Pete Gibbard and James Mummery, will continue to support both projects through their construction over the coming years.