After a deferment of several months, Sunbury BESS Limited has recently submitted a revised application for a Battery Energy Storage System on the Charlton Lane site. Readers may recall that the previous application, which was itself a revision of the earlier 24/00017/FUL, was withdrawn from the agenda just before the December 2024 planning committee meeting, at which it was recommended for refusal.
Although there are as yet relatively few submitted documents relating to the new scheme, it is claimed that the size of the proposed BESS installation has been reduced by half and that this, together with some revised landscaping arrangements and a Ground Investigation Report, justify the application now being granted planning approval.
We at LOSRA do not agree, and consider that the basic principles of this being an inappropriate industrial development on Green Belt land still apply. In fact since last December a number of events have taken place which have demonstrated the challenges of grid-scale battery storage and served to refine the recommendations coming from major bodies such as the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC). While we await the applicant’s submission of further documents on the revised scheme, you can read more on the topic here.