UK Approves Berwick Bank’s Export Cable Link to Blyth

The UK’s Marine Management Organisation has consented the offshore export cable that will carry power from the Berwick Bank wind development to the English coast, clearing the last grid-connection hurdle for the project’s third construction phase.

The decision, confirmed on November 6, 2026, covers infrastructure known as the Cambois Connection, a subsea and landfall cable route running from the outer Firth of Forth in Scottish waters to Blyth, Northumberland. Developer SSE Renewables, part of SSE plc, needed the consent because the Berwick Bank site itself sits off the Scottish coast, while part of its export route crosses into English waters before reaching shore.

What the MMO actually approved

The consent is specific to marine works: the licence covers construction, operation and eventual decommissioning of export cables and associated seabed infrastructure within English waters. Trade publications have described it as the consent for “Berwick Bank C,” reflecting its role in the project’s third phase, because it completes the chain of approvals needed to physically connect that phase of the wind farm to the onshore grid at Blyth. The cable corridor is designed to carry up to 1.8 GW of transmission capacity, a figure that describes the line’s capacity rating rather than any amount of electricity it has generated or delivered.

It is worth being precise about what this milestone is not. The MMO consent is a regulatory permission for cable infrastructure, not a final investment decision by SSE, and it does not mark the start of construction. Offshore wind projects of this scale typically require several approvals and financial milestones in sequence: marine licensing, onshore planning permission, a route to market such as a Contract for Difference, and finally an FID before anything is actually built.

The approvals already in place

This latest consent builds on groundwork laid over the past year or so. Scottish Ministers granted marine licence and Section 36 consent for the Berwick Bank project in 2025, a decision made conditional on SSE delivering a detailed seabird and ornithological compensation plan, reflecting concerns about the development’s effect on seabird colonies along the Firth of Forth. On the English side, Northumberland County Council had already approved the onshore elements of the Cambois Connection, including a converter station, onshore cable routes and the associated grid connection works near Blyth. The MMO’s offshore cable consent was the remaining piece needed to join those onshore and Scottish marine approvals into a complete, consentable connection.

Berwick Bank’s scale and its separate phases

Berwick Bank is being developed by SSE Renewables in the outer Firth of Forth off the Scottish coast, with a potential total capacity of 4.1 GW across its full build-out. If constructed in full, it would rank among the world’s largest offshore wind farms, though that scale depends on consenting, financing and construction decisions not yet made for every phase. The project is being developed in stages rather than as one consented block, and the terminology matters here: the cable consent reported above concerns Phase C, the project’s third stage.

Phase B is a separate strand of the same wind farm and should not be conflated with this week’s cable news. It secured a 20-year Contract for Difference in the UK government’s seventh CfD allocation round (AR7) in January 2026, giving it a guaranteed power price mechanism once operational. SSE has also selected contractor Seaway7 for Phase B’s foundations and cable installation work, though that award remains conditional on a final investment decision the company expects in late 2027. In short, Phase B has an offtake mechanism and a preferred contractor lined up but no construction commitment yet, while Phase C has now cleared its grid-connection consents without a CfD or FID of its own reported alongside this decision.

Context: the UK’s consenting pipeline

The approval lands amid a broader push by UK regulators to clear a backlog of offshore wind and grid-connection consents as the country pursues its clean power targets. Large projects such as Dogger Bank have followed a similar path of staged approvals and phased construction, while transmission owners including National Grid have separately expanded interconnection capacity, such as the recently approved extension of the IFA interconnector link to 2050. Consenting activity has also picked up elsewhere in UK renewables, including approval of nearly 2 GW of battery-backed solar capacity in a single month this autumn. Developers active in the North Sea, among them Ørsted, continue to navigate comparable multi-stage consenting processes for their own projects.

Sources

• Energy Voice, “Berwick Bank offshore wind farm gets government consent,” November 6, 2026 — basis for the MMO consent decision and its description as the “Berwick Bank C” cable approval.
• Renews.biz, “SSE secures Berwick Bank C cable consent,” November 6, 2026 — confirms the 1.8 GW export cable capacity and the Phase C designation.
• Northumberland Gazette, “‘Cambois Connection’ from North Sea windfarm gets go-ahead” — confirms the Cambois Connection name, the Blyth landfall location and the prior Northumberland County Council onshore approval.
• Offshorewind.biz, “Scotland Greenlights SSE’s 4.1 GW Berwick Bank Offshore Wind Farm” (2025) — background on the 2025 Scottish Ministers’ marine licence and Section 36 consent and the seabird compensation plan condition.
• Marine Technology News, “SSE Picks Seaway7 for Berwick Bank B Offshore Wind Foundations and Cables” — background on the Seaway7 contractor selection for Phase B, conditional on FID.

Illustrative image. Photo: Frans Berkelaar, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons — source