Spotlight: Funding boost to wind and hydrogen, water reform and new pressure on planners

ENERGY

✒️ Great British Energy lands deal to deliver offshore wind jobs | Press release from Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, Great British Energy, Ed Miliband MP

✒️£500m boost for hydrogen to create thousands of British jobs | Press release from Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, Ed Miliband MP

📰First offshore carbon storage project step closer | Energy Live News

📰 Chart: The rise, fall and rise of UK nuclear power over eight decades | Carbon Brief

📰 Bank unveils green loans plan to unlock trillions for climate finance | The Guardian

📰 GOW 2025: Miliband pledges supply chain funding | ReNews

📰 Boost for UK offshore wind supply chain with £400m investment from The Crown Estate | The Crown Estate

📰 NESO lays out early expectations for winter grid operations | Current News

📰 ‘Sunbelt’ countries from India to Mexico tipped to overtake in clean industry development | Financial Times (paywall)

📰 Key legal challenges and opportunities in the UK | Addleshaw Goddard LLP

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INFRASTRUCTURE

✒️Planning and Infrastructure Bill (1st reading in Lords, 12 June) | House of Lords, Bill now advancing; 2nd reading 25th June

✒️ ‘Failing’ water sector needs ‘root and branch reform’ to address culture that is ‘deaf’ to ‘crisis’ | Report by Parliament’s Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee

🗣️ Resetting the High Speed Two (HS2) programme | Oral Statement from the Secretary of State for Transport, Heidi Alexander MP

📰Transport secretary admits HS2 opening delayed beyond 2033 amid ‘litany of failures’| New Civil Engineer (paywall)

📰 UK's largest road tunnel project awarded £590m | BBC News

📰 Government axes public sector decarbonisation scheme | Local Government Chronicle (LGC)

📰Rachel Reeves to set-out 10-year UK infrastructure plan | Financial Times (paywall)

DEVELOPMENT

📰 Over 500,000 homes to be built through new National Housing Bank | Gov.uk

📰 England ‘on the doorstep of a housebuilding boom’ as Planning Portal data reveals three-year quarterly peak for new home applications | Planning Resource (paywall)

🗣️ National Housing Bank and new capital grant funding | Hansard Written Answers, TheyWorkForYou

📰 Barratt increased strategic land applications five-fold following NPPF policy changes | Planning Resource (paywall)

📰 Shortage of planning officers could derail government's housing ambitions, union warns | Planning Resource

📰 Housing target threatened by planning officer shortage, says UNISON | LocalGov

✒️ Green Belt Protection Bill (HC Bill 55) | 2nd reading on 20th June

✒️ Green Spaces Bill | 2nd reading on 20th June

✒️Agricultural Land (Planning) Bill (bill not yet published) | 2nd reading on 20th June