The Russians – that’s who many people first suspected when a fire broke out at Heathrow. But the truth was almost worse.
After a high-voltage transformer at North Hyde substation exploded, the results were catastrophic. Over 1,300 flights were grounded leaving close to 300,000 people stranded. Was there foul play from abroad working to shut Britain down?
The truth is no Russian nuclear submarines or North Korean hackers were required to wreak such havoc. The National Energy Systems Operator (NESO) is clear: the blame rests with National Grid for failing to rectify a preventable fault identified as far back as 2018. In this case, the cause was a failure to maintain a substation built in the 60s. Britain’s problems can often be traced to an over-reliance on infrastructure that was built generations ago.
Our failure not to maintain or, even – God forbid! – upgrade that infrastructure has left us vulnerable to catastrophe. Worse still, we exacerbate the problem by running what infrastructure we have built to the absolute maximum capacity.
When something goes wrong somewhere, it ends up being felt almost everywhere. British infrastructure could well be the best example of Conquest’s Third Law: “The behaviour of any bureaucratic organisation can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.”
Want to really cause chaos at our ports? Who needs a cyber-attack when you have the Great British planning system? Two of Britain’s busiest ports rely on the extremely congested Dartford Crossing. It was designed for 135,000 daily crossings, but on some days is forced to deal with 180,000 (two-fifths HGVs). Massive delays are a common occurrence. That’s why for years people have been calling for a new eastern Thames crossing.
Russia didn’t need to deploy a nuclear submarine to create a massive bottleneck around our ports. The planning system did fine by itself
Yet, this vital road link has been sabotaged at every turn. In 2020, National Highways were forced to resubmit its planning application after campaigners argued the five public consultations for the project weren’t sufficient. All in all, its planning application stretched to 360,000 pages and at £297m cost more to produce than the world’s longest road tunnel. Russia didn’t need to deploy a nuclear submarine to create a massive bottleneck around our ports. The planning system did fine by itself.
Or take the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant. When built it will provide clean reliable power to six million homes and reduce our reliance on imported gas. Building new nuclear plants like Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C is bad news for dictators like Putin who wield high gas prices as a weapon. He’d love to see them cancelled. That’s why he has funded anti-nuclear campaigners in Germany (while still building them at home).
Hinkley Point C was originally intended to be online in 2017, but has been delayed at every turn. Bogus legal challenges delayed necessary groundwork for over a year. Our environmental and nuclear regulators insisted on thousands of design changes, including the requirement to install a first-of-its-kind auditory fish deterrent system (‘fish disco’) to save a few dozen protected fish, which made Hinkley Point C the most expensive nuclear power station in the history of the world.
A fire at a substation may have caused two days of travel chaos, but a failure to build new substations near it have created a situation where major housing projects in West London are being delayed – not by the usual NIMBYism – but because they can’t buy a grid connection for love nor money.
And would the substation fire have caused as much disruption if flights could have been diverted to nearby airports such as Gatwick, which I note is still awaiting planning approval for a second runway? That’s fully 12 years since the plans were proposed.
Britain must be alert to the threat of sabotage by hostile powers and put plans in place to avoid the worst-case scenarios. Yet China, Russia, and Iran are not the only threats to our infrastructure that we should worry about. Britain’s most destructive enemy comes from within.
Sam Dumitriu is Head of Policy at Britain Remade
