Battery Energy Storage Sites: Safety Regulations

Greg Smith Excerpts

Thursday 5th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Horsham (John Milne) on bringing forward this important debate. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in it, because this is a matter of considerable concern to the many rural communities in the Mid Buckinghamshire constituency, particularly given the safety risks posed by battery energy storage systems.

Let me be clear from the outset: this is a debate not about the principle of energy storage, although I am in principle opposed to such schemes taking agricultural land and challenging our food security, but about—and this is deeply concerning and the House must urgently address it—the real, growing and too often overlooked safety implications of these installations, particularly when placed in close proximity to villages and rural road networks that are ill-equipped to support them.

The most pressing risk, and one that has already led to devastation elsewhere, is the danger of thermal runaway, as others have said. These are not hypothetical risks; they are documented, real-world events. In Merseyside, a fire at a battery site in 2020 caused an explosion that shook nearby homes and required a major emergency services response. In Arizona, a BESS fire led to an explosion that seriously injured eight firefighters, and in Belgium, a BESS fire burned for over a week and forced the evacuation of nearby businesses.

These systems contain highly reactive lithium-ion batteries. When one cell fails—often due to manufacturing defects, overheating or damage—it can cause a chain reaction across the entire installation, releasing toxic gases, generating intense heat and creating a fire that cannot be extinguished with conventional methods. In rural areas, where response times may be slower and firefighting resources more limited, the consequences could be catastrophic.

In my constituency of Mid Buckinghamshire, we are increasingly seeing applications for these industrial-scale storage sites in rural settings near homes, farms, schools, conservation areas, watercourses and rivers. These are often justified in the name of green energy, but residents rightly ask: green for whom and safe for whom? It is not just the risk of fire; the cumulative impact of associated infrastructure—substations, cabling, transformer enclosures —often means miles of narrow rural roads being torn up by heavy goods vehicles, with lasting safety implications. Roads that were never designed for such weight and volume are left with potholes, uneven surfaces and subsidence. For local motorists, cyclists, pedestrians and horse riders, or schoolchildren walking along rural lanes, this poses a daily and wholly unnecessary danger. I have received multiple reports from parish councils, residents and emergency services who are concerned that the access routes used for construction and maintenance of these sites are not fit for purpose. My constituents in the Claydons and in Little Missenden are at risk from convoys of lorries, with junction visibility reduced, verges destroyed and road surfaces degraded if BESS projects planned for those areas go ahead.

Should an emergency arise at the site itself, one has to ask: would a fire engine or ambulance even be able to reach it safely and quickly? Could the fire service even attempt to deal with such a fire? That is why I am pleased that Buckinghamshire Council rejected a 500 MW site in the Claydons last year. I trust that other speculative developers, such as the one planning a site just outside Little Missenden, will take note and spare my constituents from these unacceptable fire risks and road safety risks.

We must take a more precautionary approach. At the very least, the Government should introduce clear national guidelines on the siting of BESS installations, including minimum separation distances from residential properties, fire resilience standards, mandatory site-specific risk assessments, and restrictions on placing these facilities on or near rural roads. I urge the Government and local planning authorities to take these concerns seriously. Safety must never be sacrificed on the altar of speed or ideology, or the first technology that happens to be on the shelf that day. Our rural communities in particular deserve better protection.