Crown Estate announces start of Celtic Sea Floating Offshore Wind Farm bidding process7 February 2024

The Crown Estate now aims to provide final decisions for the three project development areas by March 2025, rather than in the second quarter as previously advertised.

Launch Process

The contract notice will be published via the Find a Tender service on 28 February 2024, with potential bidders required submit an expression of interest to receive a notification on publication of the contract notice.

Interested bidders must register via the portal and reply to the contract notice to be included in the tender process.

Updated Timeline

Our previous article summarising the above steps is available here.

The pre-qualification questionnaire submission window will open in late February 2024 and remain open for seven weeks, closing in mid-April. Evaluation is expected to complete end June 2024.

The Invitation to Tender (“ITT”) Stage 1 is still set to begin in August 2024, but will now only last for approximately seven weeks with evaluation being expected to finish in mid-December 2024.

ITT Stage 2 is now expected to run from mid-December 2024 until early March 2025, when the auction takes place. Preferred bidders are expected to be selected by mid-March 2025 and the window for entry into the agreements for leases set to close at the start of July 2025.

Habitats Regulations Assessment

Results of a plan-level Habitats Regulations Assessment (“HRA”) are also expected to be published in February 2024. Types of mitigation expected from tenderers are likely to include noise reduction and minimising the impact on birds.

Following conclusion of the auction, an HRA Conformity Check will consider both whether the plan-level HRAs remain valid and whether the results of project-level HRAs are acceptable.

Further Background

Previous articles on this project can be found here:

• October 2023 Update
• July 2023 Update

London Trainee Marcus Hensher also contributed to this article.