Rampion 2 Offshore Wind Farm Correction Order Explained
On 24 April 2026, a short but important legal order came into force for the Rampion 2 Offshore Wind Farm in England. If you saw the new entry on legislation.gov.uk, listed as S.I. 2026/465, you might think the project had just been approved again. It had not. This was a correction order, which means it fixes mistakes in an earlier legal order rather than granting a brand-new consent. The official text says the Rampion 2 Offshore Wind Farm Order 2025 contained 'correctable errors' under the Planning Act 2008. The correction order was made on 23 April 2026 and took effect the next day, giving us a clear example of how technical changes are handled in planning law.
When we slow the wording down, the first useful lesson is about statutory instruments. These are legal documents ministers can make when an Act of Parliament gives them the power to do so. They are often where the practical work of government happens, especially in areas like planning, energy and transport. **What this means:** the line saying the order was made on 23 April 2026 and came into force on 24 April 2026 is not legal padding. 'Made' tells you when it was signed. 'Coming into force' tells you when it started to have legal effect. Those are different moments, and that difference matters when you are tracking what the law actually says on a given day.
The second lesson is about development consent orders, often shortened to DCOs. For nationally significant infrastructure projects, including major offshore wind schemes, the Planning Act 2008 creates a special route that sits above ordinary local planning permission. A DCO is the main legal instrument used to grant that consent. According to the explanatory note published on legislation.gov.uk, the Rampion 2 Offshore Wind Farm Order 2025 was the order that granted development consent, and it is identified there as S.I. 2025/468. The 2026 correction order does not reopen that decision from scratch. It alters the wording of the existing consent so the legal text says what it was supposed to say.
The power used here is not vague or unlimited. The order says the Secretary of State acted under paragraphs 1(4) and (8) of Schedule 4 to the Planning Act 2008, after receiving a written request from the applicant under paragraph 1(5)(a). The request had to arrive before the end of the relevant period set by the Act, and the text says that it did. That is worth pausing on. In public debate, corrections can sound like quiet changes slipped through after a decision has already been made. This document shows a narrower process than that. There is a legal route, a deadline and a stated reason: errors in an order that already exists.
The order also shows that local authorities still sit inside the process, even when a project is handled through national infrastructure law. The Secretary of State says Mid-Sussex District Council, Horsham District Council and the South Downs National Park Authority were informed that the request for correction had been received. **What this means:** a nationally significant project is not simply taken away from local government and hidden in Whitehall. The final decision may sit at national level, but local planning authorities remain part of the formal record, especially where the development touches their area.
The correction order itself is brief because the detail sits in a schedule. Article 2 says the 2025 order is corrected through a table showing where each change is made, how it is made, and the text to be substituted, inserted or omitted. That is classic legal drafting: small textual changes, set out with precision, because planning law depends heavily on exact wording. In the extract reproduced here, we are told how the corrections are structured, but not shown every amended line. That is an important reading habit for all of us. Sometimes the headline page tells you the legal power and the broad purpose, while the real operational detail sits in a schedule further down.
Just as important is what we should not claim from this text. The legislation.gov.uk extract tells us that errors existed and were corrected, but it does not, on its own, tell us that the whole project was reconsidered or politically reapproved in April 2026. A careful reader should resist stretching a narrow legal fix into a much bigger story. **What this means:** good civic literacy is not only about understanding the words on the page. It is also about knowing the limits of the evidence in front of you. Here, the safe conclusion is that an already-approved offshore wind order needed correction, not that the state started the consent process all over again.
The instrument was signed on 23 April 2026 by John Wheadon, named in the text as Head of Energy Infrastructure Planning and Innovation at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, acting by authority of the Secretary of State. That detail may seem minor, but it shows how ministerial powers are often exercised in practice: through named officials signing instruments on a minister's behalf. For readers, this is the bigger takeaway from the Rampion 2 example on legislation.gov.uk. Not every fresh statutory instrument marks a dramatic shift in policy. Sometimes it is a legal tidy-up. But tidy-ups still matter, because with infrastructure law, a single mistaken reference or missing phrase can affect what a project is lawfully allowed to do.