Locals Fighting Back Against Giant Battery Park

For 800 years the village of Willingham by Stow has lain largely undisturbed and little noticed, hidden in the rolling Lincolnshire countryside. This week, however, the tiny one-pub village has found itself at the centre of a net zero planning row that could come to be repeated across the country. Targeted as the potential site for a giant battery park, locals have fought back against the developers – and won what some see as a famous victory. Last week West Lindsey District Council planners agreed that the batteries would make their bucolic woods and fields “look like Immingham Docks”, a reference to the nearby port which is the UK’s largest by tonnage. Councillors have rejected the scheme. That battle was among the first of what could be many more as Ed Miliband pushes plans for hundreds more such battery parks to be built across the UK. The Energy Secretary argues that such developments are essential if the UK is to cut its carbon emissions and improve its energy security. The multimillion-pound developments could even help cut bills, he claims. But for the residents of Willingham by Stow, the price of installing new battery parks is not about money but about losing landscapes, lifestyle and tranquillity – and they want none of it. Similar battles have already been fought around other renewable energy developments such as onshore wind turbines, new pylon lines and the construction of new sub-stations. The emerging battery park blitz will add to that pressure on the countryside, with Miliband planning a five-fold increase in the infrastructure, meaning industrial batteries will become a landscape feature across the UK.