Member Info for Joward

That would be a great result. Fingers crossed!

Agree the funding stack will likely be lined up (not signed or announced) before planning in this case, but it is not common for planning consent to be a CP to FID (maybe it can be but I’ve never seen or heard of this in 8+ years of energy PE, although happy to be proved wrong in this case). Planning is a development workstream and a major de-risking milestone, hence why they applied for planning early on the previous site and received it well ahead of FID. TVL is in an unusual position compared to most infra projects because of the change in location relatively late in the programme. It is however common for there to be planning conditions to be discharged as a CP to first drawdown (discharge of conditions isn’t needed for FID), which is different to the consent itself being outstanding. As previously mentioned, I think planning is low-risk, but it is outstanding for now.

 

Good points on Government grant/guarantee and NWF, they can absolutely come in sooner and I hope they do.

No arguments here, hopefully we hear more soon.

FID won't happen until they have planning, it's the same for every infrastructure project. No bank will lend construction finance to a project without planning no matter how much of a formality it will be. Ara's ROFR is for £100m at FID. So planning is needed for finance (and finance pre planning will be more risky and on worse terms which we don't want). If I'm wrong then I will be more than happy to come back and eat my words. It definitely can progress alongside planning and hopefully it is so once all the ducks are in a row we're ready to get started.

Agree planning should be a formality and not concerned, was more just surprise it hadn't been mentioned given it will be needed soon. As you say it should be fairly quick once it goes in but we're now in June so hopefully they submit soon and we stay still on track for October. Fingers crossed.

The company is making progress, which is good to see. But seems like the elephant in the room is the planning status on the new site (they had planning at Wilton but not at Billingham). The project can't get to FID and raise finance without it, so I hope they are getting on with it (hard to tell from the outside).

Hoping government and local council interest will speed things up, but ultimately means financing is still a couple of months away. Would be good to get a company comment on this as very little has been said to date.