Battery Energy Storage Sites: Safety Regulations

Samantha Niblett Excerpts

Thursday 5th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Samantha Niblett (South Derbyshire) (Lab)]

In common with the hon. Gentleman, I welcome renewable energy. Safety is hugely important. In my constituency there are lots of battery sites that are being placed in pockets around beautiful little villages because there are connections to the national grid. Because of the potential fire hazards and possible toxic run-off into local rivers, does the hon. Gentleman agree that we should prioritise brownfield sites as opposed to such pockets around pretty little villages?

[John Milne]

The issue of site choice is closely associated with grid capacity, so that is a factor. That is why some of these sites are ending up in otherwise somewhat improbable and very un-industrial settings. Rules around the pollution of watercourses are one of the most important measures to be brought in, and a wider discussion of land use is going on that could help with that.

There was another accident in February this year. Essex firefighters dealt with a fire at a BESS project that was still under construction and therefore not even operating at full power. The most serious incident internationally, which caused serious injury, was in McMicken, Arizona in 2019. As a result, America, along with Germany, has some of the most effective BESS protocols in the world, which I think could be copied.

Overall, BESS fires are high risk in their impact but low in incidence. The Faraday Institution estimates that only one in 40 million battery cells will experience failure resulting in fire. That is an exceptionally high standard of safety, but there are millions of batteries, so there will be accidents—and, of course, in a BESS scenario one battery can trigger another. Grenfell was one fire in one building, yet the ramifications continue today. It has left us with the huge cost of retrofitting large numbers of high-rise buildings across the UK built with similar cladding methods. Even a single failure can therefore undermine an entire industry if it turns out to be the result of a systemic mistake in design.

The UK’s regulatory approach to BESS safety relies on performance-based regulations such as the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 and the Building Regulations 2010. They place the responsibility on the responsible person—the site owner—to ensure that adequate safety measures are in place, but they lack specific provisions tailored to BESSs. Too much reliance is being placed on individual owners to mark their own homework. The National Fire Chiefs Council provides guidance for the fire and rescue services, but that needs to be more comprehensive and updated constantly in line with changes in technology if it is to serve a proper regulatory purpose. On fire response regulation, recent changes to the International Electrotechnical Commission standards suggest a global shift towards mandatory water-based suppression and proactive risk mitigation, but that has not yet been echoed in UK law.

There are also the environmental impacts. The Environmental Protection Act 1990 and the Water Resources Act 1991 provide a general framework for managing environmental impacts but, again, they do not specifically address the challenges posed by BESS fires. Existing regulators do not seem to know whose responsibility this should be. In a recent application for a solar park at Cleve Hill in Kent, which includes battery storage, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero stated that the Health and Safety Commission should be consulted on safety advice, but the HSC itself said that commenting on battery safety management plans was not in its remit. That confusion is not exactly reassuring.

It is important to note that if the batteries themselves are not manufactured in the UK, the Government have limited scope to regulate. However, because batteries are produced under controllable factory conditions, their failure rate is low. The focus of UK regulation should instead be on the processes that can happen in this country, especially the design of the battery containers and the overall site.

I understand from the Electricity Storage Network, which is the industry group for electricity storage in Great Britain, that it is currently talking to officials at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs about a new permitting system. It is also talking to the British Standards Institution about laying down new standards for design and emergency response. However, the Government have responded to all questions from myself and others saying that they consider the present regulatory regime to be “robust”. I am tempted to say that pride comes before a fall.

In the last few weeks, a spokesperson for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has stated:

“Battery fires at storage sites are rare in the UK. We already have high safety standards in place that require manufacturers and industry to ensure batteries are safe throughout their lifespan.”

That is just too complacent. Fires as a result of cladding were also incredibly rare, but that did not save 72 lives at Grenfell.

I and others have been asking for action for some time, but so far without success. It feels like the message still is not getting through. It is very concerning that many questions are passed from Department to Department, with no one seeming to be sure exactly whose responsibility it is. Because of inadequate regulation, some BESS units have already been fitted with inappropriate fire suppression techniques, which might actually make the problem worse, but they were installed in good faith by operators looking to do the right thing. Why are the Government so reluctant to act? I hope that the Minister will explain. Perhaps the Government are worried that regulations would slow down the planning process, but I would argue that clearer rules will actually make life easier for planning officers and councillors. Currently, they have to grapple with a complex technical subject for the first time each time—that is too much to ask of non-experts. I further suggest that it would be easier to win public consent if there were more clarity and consistency.

Perhaps the Government fear stifling innovation in a new and rapidly changing industry. I wholly agree that any regulations need to be carefully drafted and have sufficient flexibility. Any guidance needs to cover a number of areas, including the transportation of batteries to the site, design and construction, firefighting, ongoing inspection and decommissioning. In the short term, if the Government are—for any reason—still reluctant to regulate, perhaps they could issue clear national guidelines that are capable of being updated annually. Enforcement might then take place through the insurance industry, which would be likely to insist that any new applications follow such guidelines. As no project can go ahead without insurance, this would be enforcement by the back door.

Grenfell was a wholly predictable tragedy. A similar fire at Lakanal House in Camberwell, which killed six people, should have made us understand the risk, but that warning was not heeded and history took its course. We cannot go back in time to stop Grenfell, but we can act now to avoid making the same mistake again with battery energy storage systems.