New guidance for planning grid-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) projects has been issued by the National Fire Chief Council (NFCC), the professional voice of the UK Fire and Rescue Service.
The new framework replaces the guidelines first published in 2023. It aims to support fire and rescue services across the country by informing them of BESS projects, enabling effective operational pre-planning and ensuring that its requirements are ‘proportionate to the danger and risk present on site’.
The aim is to do this ‘without unduly burdening the developer of the BESS installation’, and to promote a consistent approach across the fire and rescue services, the NFCC added.
This guidance sets out that developers and operators must undertake a comprehensive risk management process, which includes developing, implementing, maintaining and assessing risk control measures. That process should allow for a robust battery safety management plan and emergency response plan, developed in collaboration with the local fire and rescue service, the NFCC said.
The The UK had around 12.9 GWh of network-scale BESS online at the end of 2025according to our internal Solar Media Market Research data, reported by our sister site Energy storage.news.
Changes in the new NFCC BESS guidelines
The new guidelines are greatly expanded from the 2023 version, with twenty special sections, more than double.
There are new sections detailing organizational requirements for fire and rescue teams.
The guidelines also outline the need for a comprehensive risk management process leading to a robust battery safety management plan and emergency response plan. In the past, a ‘robust contingency plan’ was simply needed. It also contains new specific guidelines for explosion control.
The new guidance also states that the BESS distance can be reduced to 3 feet (0.914 m), assuming the unit has passed certain tests, including UL 9540A. That distance is recommended by the U.S. National Fire Protection Association’s NFPA 855 guidelines for BESS, which is often referenced worldwide as a standard to meet.
Previously, the NFCC recommended a minimum distance of 6 meters between units unless evidence-based reduction was demonstrated. However, UK industry has often used the NFPA 855 standard instead of the NFCCs for some time.
There are also new requirements and guidelines around water flow, detailed incident impact assessments and vapor cloud mitigation. You have access to the NFCC’s fully updated guidelines can be found here or a summary of what’s new here.
Recent incidents
The last (and only recent) notable fire incident at a major electricity-scale BESS project in Britain, to our knowledge, occurred at the Thurrock project in Essex, which was built by owner-operator Statera.
In February 2025, one of dozens of BESS units on the project under construction caught fire. As reported by Solar energy portal, it was brought under control by local firefighting teams and returned to management less than 24 hours after the response began.
The project was then commissioned in August.
