Council pulls plug on battery storage unit plan

Battery units are used to store electricity until it is needed by the National Grid

A bid to build a battery storage farm in Surrey has been thrown out after councillors decided it did not justify building on green belt land.

Sunbury BESS Ltd wanted to install 50 industrial-scale battery units – each the size of a shipping container – on 3.5 hectares (8.6 acres) of land in Shepperton, between the M3 and a railway line.

Officers previously said its climate benefits outweighed the harm to the green belt, but Spelthorne Borough Council's planning committee threw out the application, arguing there were not "very special circumstances" to justify bulldozing into green belt land.

The company has been approached for comment.

The scheme, designed to store energy for the National Grid and release it when demand peaks, was pitched as helping the UK hit its climate targets.

The firm halved the size of its original plans following strong objections.

But residents wrote more than 40 letters objecting to the proposal, raising concerns about fire risk, noise, health hazards and what they described as "the industrialisation" of Shepperton's countryside, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Planning officers said the battery farm counted as "inappropriate development" in the green belt, causing a "significant loss of openness" and clashing with rules designed to stop urban sprawl.

Officials added that there was no evidence to refuse the battery farm on safety grounds, with no objections from Surrey Fire & Rescue Service and the Health and Safety Executive.

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