A £500MILLION scheme to remove the “biggest and ugliest” pylons from the landscape has been welcomed by Burnham MP Tessa Munt.

National Grid says it will take down pylons and run electrical cables underground in protected landscapes.

The work will be funded through levies on customers’ energy bills, adding an estimated 22 pence per year to a typical household’s bill.

Ms Munt said: “This announcement, while only about pre-existing pylons in National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty in England and Wales, is nonetheless very welcome.

“This marks a significant change in tone from National Grid. Those of us who have been campaigning on this issue for years must now seize this opportunity and push those holding the purse-strings to meet with us and listen properly this time.

“National Grid has acknowledged that into the future it expects all cables will be placed underground or subsea. The company managed to underground every single cable in the Olympic Village and in Germany and across much of Europe laying cables underground is already the norm.

“Now National Grid has accepted the need to underground cables retrospectively in some of our most sensitive landscape areas.

“I’ll continue to work with Parliamentary colleagues representing areas with similar fights on their hands to push National Grid, which could save everyone lots of trouble simply by laying cables underground from the outset.”

Ms Munt has long campaigned to have new cables run underground, particularly in relation to the National Grid plans to connect Hinkley Point C to Avonmouth in Bristol via pylons across the Somerset Levels, with power lines above ground in the Burnham area.

Chris Baines, chairman of National Grid’s stakeholder advisory group, said: “Undergrounding is best when you can do it. A range of engineering measures could be implemented including the replacement of existing overhead lines with underground cables, the re-routing and screening from key public viewpoints of the lines.”