According to the statutory instrument published on legislation.gov.uk, the Rampion 2 Offshore Wind Farm (Correction) Order 2026 was made on 23 April 2026 and came into force on 24 April 2026. Its purpose is limited but legally important: it corrects errors in the Rampion 2 Offshore Wind Farm Order 2025, the development consent order, or DCO, that originally authorised the project under the Planning Act 2008. That matters because a DCO is the main legal instrument for a nationally significant infrastructure project. Where the wording is wrong, even in a confined way, the correction has to be made through the statutory route rather than by informal amendment.
The 2026 instrument states that the earlier order contained 'correctable errors' for the purposes of paragraph 1 of Schedule 4 to the Planning Act 2008. It also records that the Secretary of State received a written request from the applicant before the end of the statutory period allowed for that process. In plain terms, this is the mechanism Parliament created for fixing mistakes after an order has been made. It is not a fresh consent decision and it does not reopen the planning merits of Rampion 2. The legal task is to amend the text of the 2025 order so that the operative drafting says what it was intended to say.
The order further records that Mid-Sussex District Council, Horsham District Council and the South Downs National Park Authority were informed that the request had been received, as required by Schedule 4 to the 2008 Act. These bodies are identified in the instrument as the relevant local planning authorities. For policy readers, that detail shows that even a correction order has a defined procedural trail. The local authorities are not the decision-makers on the correction itself, but they are kept within the process because the underlying DCO can carry local planning, monitoring and enforcement consequences.
Article 2 of the correction order says the 2025 instrument is amended in line with a schedule. The schedule follows the standard statutory format: one column identifies where the change is to be made, a second explains whether text is being substituted, inserted or omitted, and a third gives the replacement or added wording. In the material provided here, the detailed schedule text is not reproduced. For anyone working from the Rampion 2 consent, the practical point is that the operative legal position is the 2025 order as read together with the 2026 correction order and its schedule.
The instrument was signed by John Wheadon, 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 confirms the correction was made through the departmental powers used for energy infrastructure planning decisions. The footnotes also place the power in its wider legislative context. They refer to amendments to the Planning Act 2008 made by the Localism Act 2011, the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009, the Housing and Planning Act 2016 and the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023. For practitioners, that shows that post-decision correction powers sit within an established DCO regime rather than an ad hoc administrative process.
The immediate implication is straightforward. From 24 April 2026, any party relying on the Rampion 2 DCO should check the corrected text rather than using the unamended 2025 version on its own. That includes project teams, planning authorities, legal advisers and any party whose rights or duties depend on the wording of the order. More broadly, the instrument is a reminder that the Planning Act 2008 allows limited errors in major infrastructure consents to be fixed without reopening the entire examination and decision process. For offshore wind and other nationally significant projects, that keeps the legal record usable while preserving a clear statutory route for making the change.