9 May 2025
Letter to EACC from Ben Morse, Chair of Cockenzie & Port Seton CC
Subject: Battery Energy Storage Systems: Gaps in planning policy and regulation; threat of inappropriate development
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Dear Ken,
I hope this email finds you well. I was hoping you might be able to pass the below to the various Edinburgh Community Councils and help publicise a Scottish Parliament petition I have written as Chair and on behalf of Cockenzie and Port Seton Community Council in East Lothian.
It concerns the current poor state of national guidance over the location for and planning and consenting of Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS): https://petitions.parliament.scot/petitions/PE2157. This is for the benefit of all Scotland.
Although the issue has been most prominent in rural communities so far, we are also beginning to see these creep into the cities (already aware of a proposal for one near Sighthill thought I can’t say I’m familiar with the case enough to comment on its relative merits/drawbacks).
The background to the petition is that for the past two years my own Community Council has been dealing with a proposal for a large BESS (larger than any currently operating in Europe) upwind of our community, including Health Centre and Primary School, and within 90m of residences, 39m of a playpark, and on greenfield land, when alternative brownfield land existed further from the community (with the same landowner… our local authority).
Other developers have been clear publicly that they would not touch a site within 200m of houses due to the noise impacts on residents and safety concerns (easiest way to de-risk in the event of an incident is to place further from houses and the community). That case is now under consideration at the Energy Consents Unit of the Scottish Government. We’re hopeful that the case we made is a strong one and the ECU will agree with the community’s objections.
That said, however, the amount of effort that has been required from the community to make that case has been staggering – with scant support from our local authority along the way. We have been fortunate to have the support of locals with expertise such as a former internationally-accredited Environmental Chemist, and a former Roads Policing Inspector for Lothian and Borders who was also head of Security at Torness Power Station. If not for individuals like that, it would have been an even tougher task.
What is clear is that there are huge gaps in policy and regulation which require a measure of self-regulation from the industry and/or proper intervention in the Section 36 consultation from a Planning Committee to force a public enquiry to avoid instances of unsuitable sites like this being subjected to what one developer described to an MSP as a ‘gold rush’ of applications.
Our community has already suffered through this (and still faces the possibility of having this development foisted upon us), and I don’t want other communities to suffer in the same way: hence the petition to ask for national guidance to inform this process.
This isn’t a NIMBY thing, this isn’t an anti-Net Zero thing; this is about ensuring local voices are properly heard during a just transition and prioritising the health and wellbeing of our communities over profiteering developers. Our community is already gladly hosting one, and has supported the consent of another, offshore wind farm’s onshoring substation(s) – the developers of one of which also objected to the BESS.
These substations are in appropriate sites and consistent with policy. BESS is currently up to three-times oversubscribed nationally compared to the UK Government’s Clean Power 30 document released last year: ensuring that list is whittled down based on appropriateness of location and not a mad dash for profit is important for ensuring a just transition for all our communities.
If any of your community councils have any questions or even if you wanted further information briefly presented at the next meeting of the association, I’d be very happy to assist. Extremely grateful to you and your members for any support, both directly signing the petition and sharing it further.
Additionally if anyone is moved by our plight in terms of the specific case of the Cockenzie BESS, a community-led campaign group: CACB (Communities Against Cockenzie BESS) has arranged a demonstration for outside the Scottish Parliament on Thursday 22 May, further information here: https://facebook.com/events/s/demonstration-communities-agai/1372793004041344/. Any support gratefully received!
Very best wishes,
Ben Morse
Chair, Cockenzie and Port Seton Community Council