Stocking Pelham Parish Council invites you to comment on the Battery Energy Storage System
The planned BESS at East End (Hixham Hall), one of the largest planned in the country, is moving through planning rapidly. The number of vehicles coming through our villages for two years is astonishing—4,758 extra trucks and articulated lorries.
The applicant has recently filed new traffic management plans, which make it clearer how much traffic there will be and of what type. We now know there will be both lorries and articulated lorries (HGVs) with larger loads coming through Clavering, Manuden, Newport, Berden, Farnham, Stocking Pelham, and all the roads and villages between every day for two years. Here is the program:
Set-up phase (4 months): an average of 14 trucks per day, 6 days a week (= 1,456 trucks)
Delivery of equipment phase (9 months): an average of 5 articulated lorries per day (= 1,170 articulated lorries)
Construction and finishing stage (7 months): an average of 6 trucks per day (= 1,092 trucks)
Finishing stage (5 months): 5 trucks and 3 articulated lorries per day (= 650 trucks and 390 articulated lorries)
Total: 4,758 extra trucks and lorries coming through our villages, 6 days a week.
Feel free to file an objection to this development on the East Herts site. Go to https://publicaccess.eastherts.gov.uk/online-applications/ and look for 3/24/1953/FUL. The revised Construction Traffic Management Plan (which specifies the kinds of vehicles needed and the routes) was posted on 18 December. The Transport Assessment (which details the duration of each construction phase) was published on 22 October 2024.
Note: Essex Highways has not yet commented. Please also consider the cumulative effects of the already approved planning application for solar panels between Berden and Stocking Pelham.
Stocking Pelham substation still has free capacity for additional connections, and we now have the largest battery planned yet. At 400MW, it will be one of the largest in the country, and all the batteries and infrastructure will be delivered by HGVs through Newport, Clavering, Berden, Stocking Pelham, then back through Manuden and Farnham. At peak, there will be 39 two-way HGV movements per day. Deliveries will last nine months if all goes well, and then, of course, there will be continued maintenance and surveillance. There will also be light goods vehicles (LGVs) coming up through Albury from Little Hadham to the Hixham Hall access road.
I am sure we are all in favour of green energy, but this development comes on top of the Berden Hall Solar Farm (approved but construction not yet started) and the other applications for BESS in Stocking Pelham.
This new battery is located between Stocking Pelham and Albury in Hertfordshire. Please look at the plan and the route, which can be found on the East Herts planning portal:
https://publicaccess.eastherts.gov.uk/online-applications/
Search for 3/24/1953/FUL.
The best document to understand the traffic impact is the eighteenth document in the list: "TRANSPORT ASSESSMENT". The official closing date for comments is 3 January 2025. Stocking Pelham Parish Council has negotiated with East Herts Planning a 14-day extension to this, so the closure date for comments will be 17 January 2025. Comments after this date can still be made but cannot be guaranteed to be considered.
With thanks to Councillor Colin Berthoud for compiling this circular and crunching the numbers.
Yours faithfully,
Tony Southham
Chairman, Stocking Pelham Parish Council
