Cleve Hill Solar Park

Helen Whately Excerpts

Tuesday 10th December 2024 Westminster Hall

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

I will call Helen Whately to move the motion, and then I will call the Minister to respond. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention with these 30-minute wonders.

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the impact of Cleve Hill Solar Park on communities in Faversham and Mid Kent constituency.

For centuries, the view from Graveney church tower has been spectacular, looking across miles of marshland to the Swale beyond. In the summer, there are wide-open blue skies and sheep grazing in the sunshine among the rushes going down to the sparkling water of the estuary. In the winter, still beautiful if bleak, there are clouds scudding across a grey horizon, down to the froth of white horses on galloping waves, accompanied by the cries of seabirds, calling as they circle overhead, buffeted by wind and rain.

This epic landscape inspired great British writers such as Charles Dickens and Daniel Defoe. Since then, it has continued to inspire countless visitors and locals alike—the backdrop for walkers travelling the ancient Saxon Shore way, a haven for birdwatchers and the seabirds they have travelled to see, or just a place to find peace and tranquillity in our otherwise busy lives. But no more.

In 2020, planning permission was granted to build Cleve Hill solar park. In 2021, the park was acquired by Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners, a US investment fund based in Texas. In 2023, construction began. Now, as we near the end of 2024, the work is nearly done. Soon, the village of Graveney in my constituency will host the UK’s largest solar power plant, generating 373 MW of electricity. Alongside the solar array, the developers have permission for a large-scale battery installation, with up to 700 MWh of capacity. The concrete base for the batteries is being constructed, and the batteries themselves are now in the country, soon to be installed. The plant is set to become operational early next year.

As I speak about this huge solar installation in my constituency, hon. Members should make no mistake: I recognise climate change as one of the greatest threats to our planet and way of life. I want us to continue our shift to renewable energy, reduce our carbon footprint and improve our energy security, and that includes solar. I welcome solar on factory and warehouse roofs, housing developments, brownfield sites and even out-of-the-way pockets of poor-quality land. But Cleve Hill is altogether different. When complete, the solar park will cover more than 700 acres—an area larger than the town of Faversham itself. It will have not far off 1 million solar panels, each the height of a double-decker bus. No amount of natural screening can prevent this huge installation from dominating the landscape.

It is not just about the views. The marshes were home to rare species, including Brent geese, golden plover, marsh harriers and the red-listed lapwing. The humble dormouse and water voles also thrived in the dykes and field margins. Before the Cleve Hill solar team arrived, there was a totally different vision for this spot. The Environment Agency planned to restore the marshes to a wetland, which would have provided a haven for the wildlife, sequestered carbon and acted as a natural flood defence.

As someone who has stood knee-high in flood water in my own home, I do not take the risk of flooding lightly. As many as 17,000 homes are at risk from rising sea levels along the north Kent coast. Unfortunately, the planning inspector considered the solar development only against the agriculture land use at the time. Instead of Graveney’s marshland being transformed into a haven for nature and a release for rising sea water, it has been transformed into an industrial zone.

Over the years since the solar scheme was announced, I have received hundreds of letters and emails from people asking me to stop it. I have worked with Graveney’s excellent parish council, the Save Graveney Marshes campaign group and the GREAT campaign. All have worked hard to give the community a voice in the planning system, but to no avail. As a nationally significant infrastructure project, the final decision was taken away from local residents and our local council. I am told that when planning inspectors recommended that the development go ahead, there was little room for the Secretary of State to go against their recommendation, even though only 15 out of 867 public representations supported the project. Like many people, I was gutted when it was approved but we are where we are.

Since then, my focus, like the campaign groups, has switched to trying to reduce the harm and risks to the local community, and trying to claw back some benefit. That is why I have secured this debate. I am here to raise the three main areas of concern expressed by my constituents: safety, disruption and damage, and compensation for the community, who now have an industrial site on their rural doorstep. This is important to my constituents, but important to communities around the country facing large-scale solar developments; they, too, will want to hear what reassurances the Minister can offer.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate. The issue of disruption is incredibly important. I have a number of quarries in my constituency, and I know only too well the damage and enhanced wear and tear that such sites can cause on smaller countryside roads—I do not know the hon. Lady’s constituency, but I presume that that issue will affect it as well. Does she agree that the road safety implications of heavy goods vehicle traffic using these roads over a number of years must be a priority for the construction company? The only way to address that is to have open communication with the local community and a point person to deal with issues as they arise. Has the hon. Lady been able to persuade the construction company to do that?

[Helen Whately]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, which I will address in a moment. First, I want to talk about safety, because the safety of the large-scale battery installation is the biggest worry for my community.

To give a sense of the scale, Cleve Hill’s battery capacity will be equivalent to half the output of a small gas-fired power station. Large-scale battery storage systems carry risks including overheating and fire, which can produce toxic fumes and water contamination. To date, more than 65 fires and explosions have been reported in similar battery storage systems across the world.

In March, I hosted a public meeting about battery safety, which was attended by Matthew Deadman, an assistant director at Kent Fire and Rescue Service and the National Fire Chiefs Council lead officer for alternative fuel and energy systems. Almost 50 Graveney residents attended the meeting, which demonstrates the considerable local concern. Matthew Deadman provided some reassurance by outlining the steps that the developer is taking to put in place the safety features set out in the project’s battery safety management plan, but that has not allayed residents’ fears.

Battery fires are notoriously difficult to extinguish, and people at the meeting found it hard to believe that the fire and rescue team at Faversham fire station—fabulous though they are—or even teams across east Kent more widely, would have the specialist equipment required. There is also the question of the contamination of land and water in the event of a fire.

Another outstanding concern was the lack of an evacuation plan in the event of a fire. The rationale we heard was that no evacuation would be needed, because toxic fumes and smoke would dissipate and it would be sufficient to close windows. However, residents and parents whose children attend the local school remain unconvinced.

Added to that is the potential for a fivefold expansion of the battery proposal found in the site’s battery safety management plan. Although that may or may not happen in practice, physicist and former vice-chair of the Faversham Society, Professor Sir David Melville CBE, warns that the site does not have adequate space for such an increase in battery capacity while maintaining the 6-metre spacing between battery units that is advised by the National Fire Chiefs Council. In fact, the Kent Fire and Rescue Service was only satisfied with the site’s battery safety management plan on the basis of the 6-metre gap being adhered to.

I am not alone in raising these concerns formally. Swale borough council scrutinised and rejected the battery safety management plan earlier this year, but its rejection has been overturned by the Planning Inspectorate, leaving the community with unanswered questions and a feeling that they have no say in the matter.

I am not the first Member to raise these concerns. Just over a year ago, a former Energy Minister said the Government intended to consult on including battery storage systems in the environmental permitting regulations at the earliest opportunity. I take that to be an acknowledgment that the current system is not up to the job. In a written question in September, I asked Ministers for an update on the timetable for the consultation, and I received the following response:

“The Government agrees with the need to have robust measures in place to manage the risks associated with facilities that use large numbers of lithium-ion batteries. Defra is considering further options, including environmental permitting, for managing the environmental and public health risks from fires at BESS sites.”

When she sums up, will the Minister advise me whether the Government will be adding battery storage systems to the environmental permitting regulations? If so, when will the consultation take place? If not, what approach to ensuring the safety of large-scale batteries do the Government intend to take? In the meantime, could the Minister tell me what agency is responsible for ensuring the safety of this development? Who will be inspecting it before it is switched on, and how will she ensure that these batteries are safe? I have been in her shoes, albeit in a different brief, and that is a question I would have been asking myself.

This issue is important not just for Graveney, but for the whole country. Large-scale batteries look likely to be an important part of our future energy infrastructure, which means we need to do this properly. Residents’ concerns cannot be brushed aside as an inconvenience. We need a proper process that takes these worries seriously and ensures that large-scale battery installations are safe.

[Sojan Joseph (Ashford) (Lab)]

My neighbouring constituency of Ashford has a big solar farm planned for it. I have recently listened to experts who have highlighted the risk of fire and toxic fumes from large batteries. Some of these farms are planned for rural areas that fire engines may not be able to access. These are genuine concerns. Does the hon. Lady agree that local concerns need to be addressed before planning permission is approved?

[Helen Whately]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. The issue is clearly of great concern to my constituents in the village of Graveney and the nearby town of Faversham, who are living close to the solar plant and the battery installation. We need to get it right in Graveney, and then we can use the same approach to get it right in other places, because this is not the one and only large-scale battery installation we expect to see. As I have said, these installations are likely to be part of our future energy infrastructure, so we must get it right in Graveney and across the country.

The second area of concern, which was referred to by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), is the impact of construction on local residents and, in my constituency, on the village of Graveney itself. Residents and schools have put up with many months of heavy construction traffic. It is down to the hard work of the community and people such as Mike Newman, the parish council chair, sitting down with the developer, that we now have an effective traffic management plan. That has mitigated the impact, and I recognise that the developer has played its part—for instance, by restricting lorry movements at certain times to accommodate the school—but even when construction ends, residents will be left with the consequences. Some houses have cracks in their walls thanks to the huge lorries thundering past day after day, and the lane through the village will need resurfacing. The community is looking to the developer and hoping that it will stick to its word and make good any damage, but the worry hangs over the village all the same, not least because no such requirement was part of the planning process, and nor is it set out in law.

That brings me to the final outstanding concern. When an unpopular planning decision is made locally, there is at least the silver lining of a section 106, or a community infrastructure levy contribution, which can go towards a new school, a GP surgery or a similar community facility, but not so with a nationally significant infrastructure project. I know that one of our challenges as a country is the time and cost required to build any new infrastructure, and I have no appetite to make that worse, but it is hard to stomach the fact that a small village such as Graveney could find itself hosting a power station, in effect, and have nothing by way of compensation.

I am grateful to the developer for indicating that it will make a significant community contribution, and I know there is a discussion about the potential for a longer-lasting approach that could support the community over the lifetime of the project, as an alternative to a one-off. However, that begs the question of why the community is left relying on the good will of the developer. The Minister’s Government intend a big overhaul of the planning process, with the objective, rightly, of ensuring that we get better at building infrastructure. I suggest that one way to do that is to ensure that there is something in it for the local community, especially when, as is the case here, it bears the brunt, with no discernible local benefit.

I will sum up to give the Minister time to reply. With regret, I accept the reality of Cleve Hill solar, the UK’s largest solar installation, and the large-scale battery storage that comes with it. What I do not accept is the failure to address residents’ concerns about safety, the failure to give residents certainty about repairing the damage from construction, and the feeling that the community is on its own, negotiating compensation from the developer for the industrialisation of the marshland it holds so dear.

On all three counts, I seek the Minister’s assurance and action. To be clear, I am not advocating more red tape. This is about doing something better, not making it harder. If we get this right, we can improve how we build energy infrastructure in this country. That is important because we need more renewable energy generation capacity to meet our future energy needs, in a world where economic growth is likely to be dependent on energy-intensive computing power. All our futures depend on that, so let us ensure that we get it right, starting right here, right now, with Cleve Hill solar.