Fire and Rescue Services: Clean Energy Projects

Lord Mackinlay of Richborough Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mackinlay of Richborough (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my directorship of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. When I was the MP for South Thanet, we had a proposal for one of these battery farms—let us call them that—in the constituency. I wrote to Kent Fire and Rescue Service with my concerns, and it wrote back with its own. As my noble friend Lady McIntosh quite rightly states, fire and rescue services really have very little part in the process. I ask the Government to consider a statutory Section 106 requirement applying to each and every one of these battery farms, so that they have to pay for the specialist equipment that local fire and rescue services need to put such fires out. Once they start to go, there is very little that you can do with usual water systems to put them out. It requires specialist equipment and, not least, a local evacuation, because the fumes that come off these lithium-powered fires are very serious and deleterious to health.

[Lord Whitehead (Lab)]

I think that we should get this into some proportion. As I have said, the number of battery fires over the last five years is four. The percentage of fires that you might encounter in an industrial premises or commercial premises is higher than the proportion per thousand of battery fires. Battery fires stand within the general problem of fires across industry. As far as the extinction of those fires is concerned, there is protocol already in the fire service about how to deal with those particular fires. It is a process of enabling burnout, so that the battery does not self-reignite. The noble Lord is correct to say that there are issues relating to battery fires, particularly the ability of that battery fire to reignite itself even in the absence of oxygen. There is a protocol now to surround the fire with safety measures and allow it to burn out. That, as far as the fire service chiefs are concerned, is a perfectly adequate and safe response to those fires.