NATIONAL Grid has been asked to make good on its intentions to reduce its effect on the landscape by taking a major project offshore rather than building new pylons in the Lake District.

This week National Grid announced its intention to look into how it could reduce the visual impact of its pylons in National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB’s), including by moving them underground.

National Grid has no pylons in the Yorkshire Dales National Park and only 3.5km in the Lake District National Park - running parallel to the M6 en route from Harker, near Carlisle, to Old Hutton.

However, Friends of the Lake District says National Grid’s announcement means it should make sure no more pylons are built, particularly as part of a scheme to link the new Moorside nuclear power station near Sellafield to the rest of the country.

National Grid says its “preferred option” is to use onshore cables to carry electricity from the plant both north and south. In the south this would join a tunnel under Morecambe Bay connecting to the existing network at Heysham.

A public consultation on the the project comes to an end on November 28.

Dr Kate Willshaw, planning officer for Friends of the Lake District, said this could require the building of new 50m high pylons in the national park and along its boundaries.

“What National Grid are saying in public is that they acknowledge there’s a lot of mistakes that were made in past putting their infrastructure through protected areas,” she said.

“However, this attitude doesn’t seem to apply in Cumbria.”

Although National Grid has considered taking its cables offshore it says the environmental and technical difficulties of doing this mean it is unlikely to do so.

However, Dr Willshaw said it should back up its announcement regarding other national parks by making sure it did not build anymore pylons in The Lakes and took the cables offshore instead.

A spokeswoman for National Grid said the current consultation was on the route of the cables rather than whether they were over or underground.

“We have made no firm decisions at this stage about the technologies we will use to make these connections. We do expect to be looking at a combination of overhead line with underground cables through the most sensitive landscapes,” she said.

“We will be carrying out further widespread consultation as our plans develop. We do need to be mindful of the need to strike a balance between protecting the treasured landscapes of the Lake District and the cost of the project which is passed onto consumers through their electricity bills.”

Anyone who wants to take part in the consultation should go to northwestcoastconnections.com