UK port owners warn infrastructure improvement delays threaten renewables shift

The UK’s transition to renewable energy risks being held back by the lack of progress in infrastructure improvements due to the marine environment regulator’s “unreasonable delays” in approvals, port leaders have warned.

Port owners have criticised staffing numbers at the Marine Management Organisation that they say have left them waiting years for it to approve so-called harbour orders, which are required for certain infrastructure developments.

Miles Carden, chief executive of Falmouth Harbour, said an application to modernise the port’s legal framework had become “a massive frustration and a distraction”.

“This is a simple modernisation of powers that will take up to four years [to approve],” he said. There is “massive potential from floating offshore wind in the Celtic Sea [and] our efforts should be concentrated on delivering economic gain and new green offshore jobs”. 

The MMO, however, blames a flood of applications before its fees tripled between 2022 and 2023, which have piled pressure on resource levels that are now under review.

The regulator, which is funded by the department for environment, food and rural affairs, stressed it had not received funding to employ lawyers working exclusively on harbour orders but it was “presently reviewing our resources”.

MMO said the “perceived delays were created by the large volume of applications submitted ahead” of the fee increases and that even after raising prices from a maximum of £10,000 to £35,055, application fees had only recovered 37 per cent of the costs associated with processing harbour orders since 2011.

According to clean energy business group RenewableUK, up to £4bn must be invested in upgrading as many as 11 ports across the country, if the government’s target for energy generation from floating offshore wind is to be met by 2030.

But renewables experts have warned that the UK is lagging behind other countries in building the necessary infrastructure.

The British Ports Association, which represents the UK’s largest port owners, said its members were “growing increasingly frustrated at the lengthy and unreasonable delays in the Marine Management Organisation’s processing of harbour orders”.

“The UK ports industry has ambitious plans for growth to meet increasing demand from the offshore energy [industry],” BPA chief executive Richard Ballantyne wrote in a letter on Tuesday to Labour shadow ministers and current Conservative ministers. “We are concerned at the impact this is having on confidence in our industry’s ability to deliver new infrastructure,” he added.

Ports have warned that delays in approving harbour orders, which update the legislation governing a port owner’s powers to build on or manage a port, could hold back the developments that are required to help construct and service offshore wind farms, such as deep sea dredging and quays that can support the weight of huge turbines.

The Labour party, which is expected to form a new government following an election this week, has set out plans to invest £1.8bn in upgrading ports as part of its ambitions to boost offshore wind and accelerate the UK’s transition to clean energy. 

But Lara Moore, a partner at law firm Ashfords who specialises in assisting ports with harbour orders, said Labour’s funding ambitions would become “difficult if it takes three to four years to get statutory consent to build infrastructure”. The BPA highlighted at least five applications that have taken over three years to process.

Moore said she understood that the MMO, which has six lawyers registered with the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority, does not employ a lawyer whose dedicated priority is handling harbour orders. 

The MMO said it concluded four applications to change legislation governing the management of a port during the year to March, half the number it approved during the same 12-month period before application fees were increased in 2022. It said 28 applications were now being processed but highlighted that only one of these related to construction work.

Port leaders acknowledged that most outstanding applications did not relate directly to construction work but highlighted that applications were in progress to expand their borrowing powers and the geographic size of their jurisdiction to enable the building and operation of new infrastructure. 

“If you can’t borrow, you can’t build,” said Moore. “And if you submitted [a construction application] now for offshore wind infrastructure, it’s going to sit in that queue.”

Labour did not respond to a request for comment. Defra declined to comment.