Welcome to The Crown Estate
Cables and pipelines
- What we do
- Oil and gas pipelines
- Submarine telecommunications
- Electricity cables
- Working with us
- Crossing agreements
- Industry engagement exercise
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We manage almost all of the seabed out to the 12 nautical mile territorial limit.
Our permission is needed for the rights to lay, maintain and operate cables and pipelines on seabed for which we are landlord. We also ask to be informed of cables and pipelines that transit the UK continental shelf (within the 200 nautical mile limit), as other activities may be impacted.
Incoming applicants are required to obtain all necessary consents from government, and crossing and proximity agreements from existing tenants in close proximity to the works and works restriction zone. The Crown Estate lease or licence is considered to be the final piece in the jigsaw and entrance to it must not taken until you're fully committed to your works.
Our rights to licence renewable energy generation on the UK continental shelf means our permission is needed for the full length of electricity cables (export cables) connecting offshore wind farms to shore and these rights are granted to either the associated wind farm developer or a dedicated Offshore Transmission Asset Owner (OFTO).
This section contains information on our standard terms, pro-forma licence and lease documents, decommissioning guidance and other background information.
For further information please contact Jack Steven via the 'Get in touch' module.
Get in touch
Useful documents
- 2013 Energy and infrastructure outlook: Cables and pipelines (PDF, 420 KB)
- Submarine cables and offshore renewable energy installations proximity study (PDF, 13.3 MB)
- Pipelines heads of terms (PDF, 29 KB)
- Submarine telecoms cables heads of terms (PDF, 545 KB)
- Submarine telecommunication cables – review of terms 2010 (PDF, 108 KB)
- Cables and pipelines (UK) (PDF, 1.5 MB)
- Master option agreement (PDF, 174 KB)
- Master licence (PDF, 363 KB)
- Telecoms decomissioning guidelines (PDF, 285 KB)