By Shane Oxer — Campaigner for fairer and affordable energy
Introduction: Government by Spreadsheet
Yorkshire is being told, not asked, how it must live. The Local Area Energy Plans (LAEPs) for York and North Yorkshire lay out, with startling confidence, how our homes will be heated, how our countryside will be carved up, and where new pylons, solar fields and battery compounds are to be imposed.[¹]
There has been no referendum, no genuine debate, and no democratic authorisation. Yet these plans are already being used by civil servants and planners as if they were binding instructions rather than speculative documents.
With the arrival of the new Infrastructure and Planning Bill, the picture becomes even more troubling. This Bill gives Whitehall the enforcement muscle needed to push these desk-drawn plans into reality, regardless of local objections or the impact on rural life.[²] What emerges is not a conversation with the public but a technocratic agenda imposed upon them ,government not by consent, but by spreadsheet.
Plans Drawn from an Ideological Desk, Not the Dales
What is most striking about the LAEPs is how fundamentally detached they are from the real Yorkshire countryside. These plans are the product of consultants and civil servants who often have no lived experience of rural economies, rural landscapes or rural community life.[³] From behind a computer screen, fields become “land parcels,” farms become “low-productivity zones,” and villages are reimagined as nodes on an electrification map.The working countryside that sustains real families and real livelihoods , farmers, contractors, small businesses, hospitality, tourism, crafts, heritage management ,disappears entirely from view. To the people drafting these plans, Yorkshire is simply a carbon accounting problem to be managed, not a living landscape with its own culture, economy and identity.[⁴]
Civil Servants with No Concept of Rural Needs
These plans are shaped by officials who think in metropolitan terms , flats, buses, district heating schemes, short commutes and densely packed neighbourhoods.[⁵] Rural Yorkshire could not be more different. Many homes are centuries old, still heated by oil or LPG, built with stone walls that cannot take the intrusive retrofits required for heat pumps. Public transport is limited or non-existent, and people routinely travel long distances for work, shopping or healthcare. Local economies depend on farming, tourism and small, geographically dispersed industries.Yet the LAEPs proceed as if rural Yorkshire were simply a northern version of Croydon. They assume universal EV adoption, heavy reliance on public charging networks, widespread heat pump installation, and large-scale renewables scattered across open country.[⁶] None of this aligns with how rural communities live or what they need. The plans reveal a deep ignorance ,or worse, a deep indifference ,to the realities of rural life.
The Infrastructure & Planning Bill: Turning Ideas into Orders
The most dangerous aspect of the entire LAEP agenda is the way it intersects with the Infrastructure and Planning Bill. On their own, LAEPs are advisory documents. In combination with the Bill, they become blueprints for compulsory development.[⁷] The Bill accelerates large-scale infrastructure schemes, weakens local authority power, and allows ministers to overrule communities with ease. Once an area has been mapped in a LAEP as “suitable” for solar, wind or grid expansion, developers are effectively gifted a legal presumption in their favour.[⁸]This transforms an ideological exercise into a system of enforced land use. The civil service draws the plan; Parliament passes the mechanism to impose it; local people watch their influence eroded to the point of irrelevance. This is not planning reform. It is the quiet construction of a centralised authority over rural land, rural homes and rural ways of living.
From Guidance to Dictate:
How Bureaucracy Becomes Law
Civil servants often reassure the public that none of this is binding. What they fail to mention is how guidance morphs into de facto law. Once the LAEPs define what “should” happen in a region, national policy statements require councils to prioritise those outcomes. Planning inspectors then use the Infrastructure and Planning Bill to fast-track infrastructure deemed “strategic.” Courts, in turn, treat Net Zero obligations as overriding considerations in planning disputes.[⁹]The result is a system in which the public technically retains a voice, but one that has little influence. Objections become procedural formalities. Local committees become rubber stamps. The real power lies with those who drafted the initial plans, long before residents had any say. That is not democratic planning. It is a managed imposition.
Yorkshire Told How to Live
When the plans are read alongside the new laws designed to enforce them, they amount to an instruction manual for Yorkshire’s future. Homes will be electrified whether they can afford it or not. Heat pumps will replace boilers whether they work well in rural stone houses or not. Vast swathes of farmland will be covered in industrial-scale solar arrays regardless of their agricultural value. The countryside will be reshaped to serve an ideological programme originating far from the places it affects most.[¹⁰]It is not an invitation. It is an ultimatum.
The Rural Voice Has Been Designed Out
Public consultations, when they occur at all, are largely theatre. By the time the public is asked for its views, the core assumptions , the heat pump targets, the grid corridors, the renewable zones , are already locked into the modelling.[¹¹] Local concerns are summarised and filed, but rarely acted upon. Rural communities find themselves participating in a process that was never intended to change course in response to their needs.The people of Yorkshire are being treated not as citizens with the right to shape their environment, but as subjects expected to accept decisions made elsewhere.
Conclusion: Time to Bin the Plans and Rewrite the Rules
Yorkshire needs an energy plan, but not this one. A real plan would begin with rural communities, not impose solutions upon them. It would respect food security, heritage, landscape character and affordability. It would align with engineering reality rather than wishful modelling. Above all, it would be grounded in democratic consent, not bureaucratic decree.These LAEPs , designed in offices, rubber-stamped by quangos, enforced by legislation , do not belong to the people they will affect most. They are ideologically driven, economically unrealistic and socially divisive.It is time to put them where they belong: in the bin.
Footnotes
[1] Local Area Energy Plans dictate projected heating systems, energy generation, grid upgrades and retrofit requirements for entire regions.
[2] The Infrastructure & Planning Bill consolidates power over major infrastructure in central government, reducing local decision-making.
[3] LAEP development is led by consultants and civil servants with minimal rural representation.
[4] Carbon accounting frameworks in Net Zero strategies routinely override landscape, heritage and agricultural considerations.
[5] Central government modelling assumes urban-style infrastructure and behaviour patterns not applicable to rural settings.
[6] Rural housing stock, transport patterns and micro-economies are incompatible with many LAEP assumptions.
[7] The Bill accelerates and legally protects infrastructure deemed “strategic”, enabling LAEP implementation.
[8] Planning inspectors may treat LAEP designations as evidence of strategic need, overriding local refusal.
[9] Judicial interpretations of Net Zero obligations often reduce local discretion in planning matters.
[10] Heat pump mandates, renewable zoning and grid expansion are embedded in LAEP modelling prior to consultation.
[11] Community input typically occurs after core modelling decisions have already been finalised.
SAY NO TO THE DESTRUCTION OF OUR LAND 
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