Consenting process and next steps

The proposed reservoir is a strategic regional asset. Due to the scale and volume of water it can hold, we’ve always intended for it to be treated as a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP), which are treated separately from local authority planning processes. The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has now confirmed this classification.

The government agency responsible for examining NSIPs is the Planning Inspectorate. We will work with them as we prepare our application and submit it for acceptance. Once accepted by the Planning Inspectorate, a panel of inspectors will be appointed who will then examine the application before making a recommendation to the Secretary of State as to whether the project should be granted development consent. It is the Secretary of State that makes the final decision.

Our application for development consent will include the area of land we would require, either permanently or temporarily, to build the project. We’ll continue to refine and consult on our proposed project boundary before submitting the application. Ultimately, this will include the land needed for the reservoir and its associated water infrastructure, and wider areas of land required for construction, environmental mitigation and enhancement, and other enabling works needed to build the reservoir. Supporting information will also form part of our application, including our assessments of any impacts and plans for mitigating them.

Local people and stakeholders have an important role to play to help inform how the project is developed and designed. During this pre-application phase, we will bewe will be gathering your feedback to help shape our proposals before we submit the application to the Planning Inspectorate.

Our summer 2024 consultation was the second phase in a multi-phase consultation approach.

We published a summary of what people told us during the phase two consultation, along with our responses to the comments in early 2025. You can view this here.

Having considered this feedback, it's clear people want us to think carefully about, and provide more information on, specific areas including construction impacts, and traffic and transport.

These are important issues for us too. We’re now intending to hold an additional phase of non-statutory consultation in autumn 2025, where we will provide an update on our proposals and more detailed information on these important areas.

To keep up to date with the project, you can subscribe to our e-newsletter here.

While the project has now been confirmed as an NSIP, our indicative timings haven’t changed.

You can see where you will have the chance to comment on our proposals on this timeline