Enquiry received from Humphrey Davies regarding access to land for National Grid's proposed Mid Wales electric line connection project.

As you may be aware, the above proposal is currently at the pre-application stage of the Planning Act 2008 (as amended) ?PA 2008? process; therefore an application has not yet been formally submitted.
National Grid is currently undertaking their early non-statutory consultation and will undertake their statutory section 42 consultation in due course prior to the application being submitted. For more information about the timing of this consultation please contact National Grid directly.
I can confirm that to date, we have not received an application from National Grid under section 53 of the PA 2008 regarding rights of entry. I have enclosed the Planning Inspectorate?s Advice Notes regarding section 53 and also section 52, which relates to applicants obtaining information about interests in land. Whilst not a requirement of either section 53 or 52 of the PA 2008, the Planning Inspectorate expects applicants submitting an authorisation request under either of these provisions to notify any landowners and/or proposed recipients who may be affected by the request that such a request has been made and to inform them that they have 21 days to provide any comments they wish to make on the authorisation request to the Planning Inspectorate. Please note that the Planning Inspectorate will assume that the identified owners and/or proposed recipients do not have any comments to make on the request if the Inspectorate has not received any comments from them by the date specified in the applicant?s notification letter.
You may also wish to view the National Policy Statements for Overarching Energy (EN-1), Electricity Networks (EN-5) and Renewable Energy Infrastructure (EN-3) produced by the Department for Energy and Climate Change. National Policy Statements are government policies which are the primary policy consideration for decision makers when dealing with different types of nationally significant infrastructure projects. The above National Policy Statements are available on the Department for Energy and Climate Change website.