The coast this project lands on
A fund, a fishing fleet and a cable that comes ashore through somebody's parish.
The community fund
We pay £1.42 million a year into a community fund for the operating life of the wind farm. The money is administered by an independent panel with four local members, and we do not sit on it.
Grants run from £750 to £48,000. The first round closed in March 2026 and paid out £287,400 across 41 groups, most of it to lifeboat stations, village halls, sea cadet units and two harbour trusts. The second round is open until 30 September 2026.
The fund covers the six parishes nearest the landfall and the four harbour towns that host our crew transfer and survey work. If you are not sure whether your group falls inside that boundary, ring the number at the bottom of this page and ask.
Mariners and the fishing fleet
Fishing boats were working this bank a long time before we arrived. Nephrops trawlers out of the Tyne and the Northumberland ports have grounds that overlap the export corridor, and potting gear sits along the inshore end of it.
We employ two fisheries liaison officers, both of them former skippers, and a fisheries liaison group meets four times a year with the local associations. Their job is not to explain our programme after the fact. It is to tell us where the gear is before a survey vessel books its window.
Cable burial depth on the inshore section was set with that group rather than for it, and where burial is not achievable the rock berm positions are published so gear can be worked clear of them. Vessel movements and safety zones go out weekly through the notices to mariners and by direct message to the associations.
Schools and college work
Eleven secondary schools and two colleges sit inside our onshore area. We fund a technician pathway with the college at Ashington, take eight apprentices a year from 2028, and run site visits to the onshore substation for engineering groups.
None of this is a marketing programme. The operations base needs roughly 180 people from 2031 and we would rather recruit them from twenty miles away than fly them in.
