ANTI-pylon campaigners have strongly rejected government proposals for payments for pylons.

Grant Shapps, Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, has written to anti-pylon campaigners and East Anglian community groups about new consultation on community benefits for electricity transmission infrastructure.

The consultation seeks suggestions for how communities can receive financial benefit if energy infrastructure affects them, saying that consumers everywhere should subsidise these payments.

But Rosie Pearson, pylon-blight campaigner and founder of the Essex Suffolk Norfolk Pylons action group, kicked back at this consultation.

She said: “The letter from Mr Shapps is very insulting. 

"While recognising our desire for community engagement on the one hand it not only misses the point that we can’t be bribed to accept the wrong infrastructure, but also neglects to mention a much more important consultation that was also launched.

“This second consultation proposes a far-reaching and potentially highly damaging change to national energy policy which would allow National Grid and wind farm operators to build what they want, where they want, anywhere in the country, without consideration for anything else. 

“The answer is for Minister Graham Stuart to wake up and smell the coffee: a co-ordinated offshore grid is good for consumers, communities and the environment. Bribing us to accept the worst of all solutions makes us extremely angry.”