Battery Energy Storage Sites: Safety Regulations

Debate between Jim Shannon and John Milne

Thursday 5th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[John Milne]

I appreciate the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention. I agree that such sites can be in remote locations where there are fewer resources. As I will say later in my remarks, fire officer training is very much part of what I am recommending.

There is a strong case for mandating water-based suppression systems, off-gas detection, ventilation systems and thermal runaway mitigation as design conditions. Unfortunately, that is far from the case today. The guidelines for planning approval are imprecise and vary across the devolved nations. Currently, the burden of responsibility falls on individual local authority planning officers who have no specific training or background in lithium-ion technology—and why on earth would they?

For reasons that are hard to understand—perhaps the Minister can explain—fire and rescue services have not been made statutory consultees for planning applications. The current guidance states that applicants are “encouraged to engage” rather than required to do so, but even compulsory consultation is not enough by itself because the fire services themselves do not always have the expertise. Within the last fortnight, Henry Griffin, Suffolk’s deputy chief fire officer asked for fire services to be given new powers, saying:

“I’d like to see a power that is akin to a regulatory order like those for a commercial property, where we would have the power to enforce safety measures on those sites.”

He explained that the fire service is currently just a “contributing partner”, able to give “direction and professional advice”, but not necessarily to require what it might like.

The result is inconsistency, which is destructive both of public trust and of the success of the industry. In my own constituency of Horsham, the local planning authority has rejected a BESS application, while a similar site, just half a mile away, across the border in Mid Sussex, has won approval. Such inconsistencies show alarming parallels with Grenfell. The Grenfell disaster was the end result of many failings by both individuals and companies, but at heart it was a failure of regulation. The rules left things wide open for exploitation by cost-cutting developers, which is exactly what happened. Just as with lithium-ion batteries, a new technology—in that case cladding—was being used at scale for the first time, without proper understanding of the risks. The time to act is now because the number of BESS applications is expanding exponentially.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing the debate. He is right to highlight the issues around lithium-ion batteries and thermal runaway; we are all reminded of explosions and fires in Liverpool in 2019 and in Kilwinning, in Scotland, in 2025. He referred to the need for legislation for the whole of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but that needs to start here. Is it his intention to ask the Minister to confirm in her response that that will happen, so that the legislation can then fan out to Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales?

[John Milne]

The hon. Gentleman is better acquainted than I am with the way that devolution works, but yes, I hope that the Minister will be able to set out whatever course of action is required to get to that point.

It is essential that we build battery energy storage sites to proper safety standards so that we do not find ourselves facing the need for a massively more expensive retrofit, with consequences for the entire energy network.

What accidents have there been so far? In September 2020, a fire at a BESS site in Liverpool created a significant blast and took 59 hours to extinguish. Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service said that the blaze on Carnegie Road

“appears to be the first significant fire of its type to occur within the UK”.

However, this was only a small BESS, with just four containers and a modest 20 MWh output in total.

Gatwick Airspace Modernisation Review

Debate between Jim Shannon and John Milne

Wednesday 18th December 2024 Westminster Hall

[John Milne (Horsham) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the potential impact of the Gatwick airspace modernisation review on local communities.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. My constituency of Horsham lies to the west and south of Gatwick airport. I have brought today’s debate in order to represent growing concerns from residents regarding the airspace modernisation process around Gatwick, which is part of the future airspace strategy implementation south, known as FASI-S.

Before I start, I would like to make it clear that I wholly support the modernisation process in principle. It is a vital step if we are to improve the efficiency of civil aviation, cut flight times and reduce carbon emissions. What I do question, however, is how we will get there. The process as it stands involves a significant conflict of interest. I would also like to emphasise that the airspace modernisation process is entirely separate from the second runway application at Gatwick, although it is going on at the same time and naturally gets confused in the public mind. The airspace modernisation process will go ahead whether or not Gatwick obtains permission to expand and is in fact part of a national process also being conducted at 19 other airports across the UK.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate. I hope I can help him and the Minister as well. For all airport modernisation reviews, the issue of sound is always of extreme importance. For example, both major airports in Northern Ireland, Belfast International and Belfast City, have residential areas nearby. Provisions must be in place to tackle excessive noise at certain times. So does the hon. Member agree that any airspace modernisation review must make the matter of noise a top priority to ensure that local communities are not negatively impacted by airspace expansion?

[John Milne]

Indeed, as I will come on to, noise is the primary issue at stake here. Gatwick Airport Ltd, referred to as GAL, is a private company. As the operator at Gatwick, it has been tasked with masterminding the airspace review process. It is subject to oversight from a public body, the Civil Aviation Authority. Similarly, Heathrow and other airports across the country are carrying out their own strategy implementation consultation processes for their own areas. The assumption is that each airport knows its own patch better than anyone else, so they are the best qualified to do the job. However, in the case of Gatwick, serious concerns have been raised. Now that we have reached stage three, which is the public consultation phase, many of my constituents and parish councils are concerned. They are worried about the impacts the proposals will have on public health, the objectivity of the process itself and whether the three shortlisted choices actually represent any kind of choice at all.

The proposed changes all involve using a new, previously not overflown flight path. Currently, planes taking off to the west climb for about 6k out before turning south to the coast. But the new route makes a much earlier turn south at about 2k out. The net effect of this change is to separate the western and southern route paths much earlier than currently, which enables a reduction in the interval between flights from two minutes down to 60 seconds. That in turn would enable the airport operator to build significantly more take-off slots into their schedules. The value of that increase in capacity is enormous, potentially hundreds of millions of pounds over the long term.

Why should the change in flight path matter so much to my constituents? Because the sharper turns mean that thousands of flights a year will henceforth directly overfly the villages of Rusper, Warnham and Slinfold at a relatively low height, radically increasing noise pollution, loss of sleep and other negatives.