Battery Energy Storage Sites: Safety Regulations

Kirsty Blackman Excerpts

Thursday 5th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Horsham (John Milne) on securing this important debate. Some of the newer Members may not know quite how much I love the geekiest possible debates. I have not had as much time since I became SNP Chief Whip, so I cannot reach the geeky heights managed by the right hon. Member for Wetherby and Easingwold (Sir Alec Shelbrooke) in reading the International Fire and Safety Journal. I commend him on that, but I want to bring the debate to another geeky level and talk about the mechanisms by which the Government should take action.

There has been a lot of talk today about planning mechanisms and regulations, but I urge the Government to look at health and safety regulations. I am from Aberdeen and a number of years ago we had the Piper Alpha disaster. The Piper Alpha disaster and the Cullen report that came afterwards resulted in a massive step change in safety. It was a huge, drastic change in how those things worked, with health and safety regulations that apply across the whole of the United Kingdom. Planning, for example, is devolved to Scotland and a lot of environmental rules are the preserve of the Scottish Parliament.

Currently, there are no health and safety rules in this area. The House of Commons Library briefing for this debate states:

“There are no laws that specifically govern the fire safety of battery energy storage systems”.

It also states:

“There are no specific health and safety laws relating to BESSs.”

I have written to the Health and Safety Executive, Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks, the city council and the Scottish Government about this issue. I have done a lot around battery energy storage sites. The HSE wrote back to me saying that it is a member of the cross-Government group on battery energy storage, so it is working on that. It has a landing page on its website that brings together some of the regulations of battery energy storage, but most of them were written for the safety of individual batteries rather than for the safety of these storage sites. That, specifically, is what is missing: the health and safety guidance for battery energy storage sites.

A number of Members have spoken about local or UK-wide issues, but across the world there have been 85 fires at battery energy storage sites. That is not a small number or a small percentage. This is a risky business. I do not disagree with those who say that these sites are necessary. We absolutely need them for our energy systems in the future, but they need to be safe. We need regulations in place. We should bring them together, even if it is just the best practice from all different places, to ensure that there is one place where the health and safety guidance is held. I would be even more flexible than having it updated by Parliament. I would give the HSE a level of control over changing and flexing that guidance, should more best practice come through. Again, that would apply across the whole of these islands, and I think that would be the best way forward.

I want to mention two other things. First, an earlier speaker mentioned that we have extreme weather events—once-in-a-generation events—just about every week at the moment. It is really important that we look at both the extreme temperatures and the flooding events that may occur, as flooding events at battery energy storage sites are an issue; whether or not there has been a fire in advance of a water leakage, there could still be concerns.

Secondly, I want to talk about the money. A number of people are looking at these sites with dollar signs in their eyes, thinking, “We can build these things and make a whole lot of money.” Actually, we should be telling the organisations that are creating the battery energy storage sites that they will need to pay for the fire safety assessment, consult the local fire service, and pay for the training of the local fire teams on tackling fires at these sites. I think that would be the most reasonable way forward. We should ask them to pay for that training, because it is those organisations that will be making a huge profit from the sites. It should not just be the public services that have to train up and increase the number of hours that retained firefighters, perhaps, are working. I think that is really important.

I urge the Minister to look at HSE guidance as the method and mechanism for taking this on. I have pushed the Scottish Government to change some of their planning guidance already—particularly around notification of local community councils, for example—but that health and safety guidance is, I think, the key place to take action, make that change and bring it together in one place, so that all our constituents are safer as a result.