A battery safety plan for what is set to be the UK’s biggest solar farm has been rejected.

Councillors voted down the proposals after almost four hours of debate and despite warnings of a “high risk there will be costs” to the council for rejecting them.

The government gave the green light for the Cleve Hill Solar Park, located in Graveney, between Faversham and Whitstable, in May 2020.

Tonight, members of Swale Borough Council’s (SBC) planning committee met to vote on the battery safety management plan for the site.

The plans require a 25-acre 150-megawatt battery storage facility to store energy generated by the 880,000 solar panels at the site.

However, the safety plan has faced intense local opposition, with more than 100 Swale residents writing in to the council to criticise the proposals.

A protest was held outside Swale Borough Council’s offices in Sittingbourne ahead of the meeting.

Carol Goatham, one of the protestors at the meeting, said: “The battery safety plan as it stands does not have any warning system in place, it does not have any evacuation plans for approximately 30,000 people who could be impacted if the solar panels caught fire or if the batteries themselves, which are lithium ion batteries, either catch on fire or explode.

“Everyone here and a lot of people who couldn’t make it here tonight are absolutely concerned and they’ve been worried for years about this."

She added: “These are on an industrial scale, and I fear and we all fear loss of life or serious detrimental harm to humans animals and wildlife."

Under the safety plan, Cleve Hill wanted to install 112 cabinets containing lithium ferro phosphate (LFP) batteries to store energy.

However, prior to the meeting objectors wrote to the council warning that there have previously been more than 65 fires and explosions reported in similar battery storage systems across the world.

Lithium battery fires cannot be extinguished with water, so the plans are meant to detail how Cleve Hill would store huge quantities of water to cool surrounding units - preventing any fire from spreading.

Cleve Hill has been made to undertake modelling on the possible movement of smoke plumes towards nearby Graveney and the village school.

SBC’s own report for the planning committee states LFP batteries are “more subject to explosion risk than other types”.

In the meeting, Paul Gregory of consultancy BST&T, hired by the council to scrutinise the plans, said of the safety plan: “I was fully satisfied that the content and protocols were fit for purpose."

However, physicist and Faversham Society member Sir David Melville CBE, argued the plans posed “unacceptable risks of fire, explosion, and the emission of toxic gases".

Cllr Mike Newman of Graveney with Goodnestone Parish Council also spoke against the plans at the meeting.

“Our responsibility is to the village, its population and its children," he said.

"The village is extremely anxious and worried - the plans to communicate an incident to them or to help them escape or survive do not exist.

“The villagers believe that they are being treated as the acceptable collateral damage at the altar of your ambitions.

“The threat and risk to the environment and life dwarfs Grenfell. Please do not make this your legacy."

Over the course of the meeting, councillors sought to refuse the plans, with many complaining about the technical nature of the proposals and that they were not in a position to properly decide.

Some councillors however did back the plans, with Cllr James Hunt (Con) saying: “Personally I’ve got no evidence otherwise to say anything we’ve been told in the recommendation to approve this is wrong.”

Cllr Andy Booth (Con) slated the attempts to refuse it, saying: “Here we are scrabbling around to try to find a reason.”

He proposed to add conditions to the application in order to pass it, but councillors voted against it.

The meeting had to adjourn for planning officers to come up with reasons to refuse the application, but upon their return they made clear that they did not think the council could defend the refusal if it was taken to an appeal at the Planning Inspectorate.

An officer said SBC is at “substantial risk of costs” as the solar farm’s developers are likely to take the council to appeal for refusing it

Cllr Booth added said that the refusal “would jeopardise not just this council but the residents of Swale”.

Cllr Booth later walked out of the room saying “this is a travesty” when members voted to reject the plans.

Members voted to refuse it on grounds of the lack of water storage facilities on site, lack of access to the battery storage area, and the lack of an evacuation emergency plan.

There were 11 votes in favour, three against and two abstentions.