By the end of May, Alok Sharma MP, Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy will decide whether to approve the world's largest battery installation as part of Europe's second-largest Solar Power Station at Cleve Hill just outside the market town of Faversham in Kent.

The plan is for almost one million solar panels the height of a double-decker bus, with storage batteries that are five times as big as the current largest in the world and would be over an area the size of 20 football pitches. These batteries, which are untested at this scale, are prone to runaway fires leading to massive explosions and the emission of toxic hydrogen fluoride gas that can kill or maim over a large area. An explosion would have the energy of a small nuclear bomb. Lithium-ion batteries have a history of spontaneous fires that cannot be put out with water and can throw flames 70ft high.

An area of land the size of our town, that would otherwise revert to marsh and sequester carbon providing habitat for important wildlife including the Marsh Harrier is to be industrialised.

We are concerned for the safety of our families and particularly our children in the nearby primary school as well as the loss of an important wildlife and amenity area. Whilst we are fully in support of solar energy, a development of this scale close to habitation is a seismic departure from previous policy and its approval could set a dangerous precedent for other such proposals nationally. Read more at https://favershamsociety.org/cleve-hill/