The five-month Examination process for the East Park application is now under way. The process will consist of numerous submissions by the developer, host local authorities (Bedford Borough Council, Cambridgeshire County Council and Huntingdon District Council), as well as other stakeholders like National Grid, Historic England, the Highways Agency and Natural England. The Planning Inspector, Graham Sword, will be asking a series of formal questions across the planning process. Stop East Park Energy will be responding to submissions where possible, drawing on a small group of volunteers with different areas of expertise.

Here’s what you can do as an individual by Deadline 2:

• Check out the developer’s response to the nearly 1,300 submissions we made back in January when we registered as Interested Parties. Click here to go to the document. Did the developer give a satisfactory response to the issues you set out in your online submission (‘Relevant Representation’)? The responses are organised in themes – try searching on key words if you struggle to find the issues you raised. If you think your issues have been ignored or not responded to properly, you can say so! Submit your points under the second option in the Planning Inspectorate’s dropdown menu (see screenshot below) – ‘Comments on responses to RRs’.

• The developer has now published its draft itinerary for the Planning Inspector’s site visit. This is when Graham Sword will come to the area and tour around the target sites for the solar and battery park, looking at different locations, viewpoints, road junctions and so on. Do you think anything obvious is missing from the site visit itinerary? If you have a suggestion or comment, now is the time to say so. Submit your points under the fourth option in the dropdown menu (see screenshot below) – ‘Comments on the applicant’s draft itinerary for the ASI (if required)’.

• The developer has published a film of a drive-through of some of the proposed route for construction traffic. What do you think when you see it? Do you think the roads it shows are safe enough to handle the thousands of construction traffic movements – HGVs, LGVs, site worker cars and minivans? Do you think that any controls the developer puts in place will be enough to make sure that all the construction traffic is prevented from using other roads across our rural road network? If you have any comments on the film and the suggested construction traffic route, including concerns over how the rest of the local B and C roads will be used, you can raise them now. Put your points under the sixth option in the dropdown menu (see screenshot below) – ‘Comments on any updated or additional documents from the applicant’. You’ll need to make it clear you’re responding to the developer’s film.

You’ll see that the dropdown menu has a number of other options. If you’re interested in responding to other documents or sending in relevant information to the Planning Inspectorate, and need advice, get in touch with the Stop East Park team at contact@stopeastparkenergy.com.

All your submissions should be made on the Planning Inspectorate’s Have Your Say page.

This is how the dropdown menu looks:

All the recordings and transcripts of the hearings on 17 and 18 March are available on the Planning Inspectorate portal: https://national-infrastructure-consenting.planninginspectorate.gov.uk/projects/EN010141/documents