Britain’s creaking power grid is threatening the expansion of the studio where Star Wars and James Bond were filmed, its chairman has warned.
Pinewood Studios chairman Paul Golding told Business Secretary Jonny Reynolds on a call last week that delays connecting to the grid was one of the factors holding the business back.
Buckinghamshire Council gave the studios approval for a 1.4m sq ft expansion last year in a move that will create over 8,000 new jobs and boost the economy by £640m a year.
But Mr Golding suggested the studio could be forced to wait until 2030 for a grid connection, seven years after it was granted planning permission, according to people on the call.
His remarks, made in the presence of almost 200 business leaders including the bosses of Siemens, National Grid and Scottish Power, show that delays have become a major obstacle to growth for businesses across the economy.
Delays in connecting to the grid, which manages the distribution of electricity and gas to British homes and businesses, have usually been associated with renewable energy projects.
It also emerged in 2022 that housing projects in West London faced severe delays connecting to the network because data centres had already gobbled up capacity.
It is understood that several other businesses on the hour-long call also raised the issue of grid capacity.
The call, which was hosted by Mr Reynolds and Gareth Davies, permanent secretary of the Department for Business and Trade, also heard executives at National Grid warn that regulation remained a barrier to growth.
Under the current first come, first served system, many viable projects become stuck in the connection queue behind schemes with little prospect of progress or speculators who have lodged applications in the hope they can later generate interest or investment.
As a result, projects can face years-long delays in getting hooked up to the power network as they wait to progress through the queue.
Tom Glover, UK chairman of power giant RWE, has warned that Britain’s “slow and bureaucratic” electricity grid is delaying the deployment of billions of pounds of investment.
A spokesman for Pinewood Studios declined to comment.
The film industry is also facing the challenge of slowing demand and the fallout from last year’s writers and actors’ strike.
Labour will introduce an industrial strategy bill in the King’s Speech this week, with the party pledging to appoint a new Industrial Strategy Council that will focus on boosting productivity and support the country’s fast-growing industries.
