Feelings are running high in the village of Heath in Wakefield – among residents and the wider community – due to Harmony Energy’s application to build a 72-container battery energy storage system (BESS) on a site at Heath Common. Harmony Energy has seemingly failed to consider not only the impact on human beings, but also the devastating effect the site will have on the horses who graze the land around the village.
Harmony Energy’s failure to fulfil sustainability goals
There is no evidence in Harmony’s proposal that the company has recognised or referenced the UN Sustainability Goal 11.4, which insists that intangible cultural heritage is honoured. In this case, the cultural heritage and legacy of the Roma, Irish and Traveller community and their horses, and the effects they have had on the landscape of Heath and surrounding area. Most specifically, Harmony Energy does not appear to have considered the impact of the BESS on the physical and emotional welfare of the horses with regards codes of practice, or to recognise the horses’ historical and cultural significance.
The UK government’s code of practice states:
“Owning and caring for a horse can be a source of great enjoyment but is also a big responsibility with a long-term caring and financial commitment. The Animal Welfare Act 2006 (“the Act”) requires you to ensure that any horse, pony, donkey or mule for which you are responsible, whether on a permanent or a temporary basis:
- has a suitable environment to live in
- has a healthy diet
- is able to behave normally
- has appropriate company
- is protected from pain, suffering, injury and disease”
Once again, there is no evidence in the energy company’s proposal to indicate that it adequately considered the importance of both the role of and the welfare of the horses and ponies that have officially been tethered at Heath Common since the travelling community was first established in 1961. The rights of these animals predate that of anything Harmony Energy is proposing.
History of Roma, Irish travellers in Heath
Within travelling communities, women had their own skills and identities – palm reading, tarot, selling lavender and knowledge of herbs – which, in times past, might have led to accusations of witchcraft. However, because they felt safe in Wakefield, they stayed, along with their cobs and their foals.
A symbiotic relationship between different cultures and heritage became embedded in the landscape around Heath Hall, with the horses a visible and vital reminder of the cultural heritage of the travelling community in Wakefield. Thousands of people each year enjoy and appreciate the benefits of the grazing rights, firmly established by the very presence of horses on the Heath.
And yet, as Fredreik Ruegger’s recent photo-essay for The Guardian, ‘I Am a Stranger in this Country’, explores, the way of life of the Roma and Irish travelling communities is constantly under threat, and they now – since Brexit – face the increased prejudice against anything perceived as different.
By choosing BESS sites close to established caravan sites, some companies may be benefitting from the fact that misinformation and hate against these communities on social media is currently at an all-time high. They are often supported in this by some local authorities, who act to prevent Travellers from continuing to use common land they have traditionally inhabited. There is often little, or no, opposition.
Take Stockton Council, for example, whose planning committee in February 2024 passed a similar site to that being proposed for Heath, after making it almost impossible for an established and vibrant community to access traditional sites.
Common land and fresh water at Whittling Well
Heath Common was registered as an open common in the late 1800s, which established the rights of the animals and those who owned them while they lived there. The Whittling Well, a Georgian stone arch and a tangible cultural asset, has been providing fresh clean water for animals ever since; a quiet, safe and protected access for the horses to that well remains vital.
The construction of and existence of the BESS compound would fundamentally interfere with the right of the owners of the horses to access fresh, clean water without causing extreme distress to animals whose rights to graze without hindrance was established centuries ago.
Harmony Energy seems to know little of the countryside that the building of the BESS site will decimate, and equally little of the heritage of the landscape of Heath.
Horse welfare
Horses are highly sentient beings that are affected by noise from up to two and a half miles away. They can suffer extreme anxiety as a result which, in turn, affects their welfare, behaviour, performance, and their relationships with those who care for them.
The noise during the building phase of the BESS, and the unacceptable levels of noise pollution thereafter, would be both irresponsible and cruel, and breaks the code of conduct for horse welfare set out by the government in 2018. The council has accepted that it will emit more than the legal noise level for a 12-month period in the first month alone.
Once construction begins on the BESS site, the horses at Heath will be traumatised, and the environment for miles around Heath will be in ruins.
The horses on Heath Common are there by licence and their owners must comply, as all other horse owners must, with regulations regarding health and wellbeing, which includes maintaining a safe environment for them to live in. If Harmony Energy creates an environment that traumatises horses within a 2.5-mile radius, who will be called to account for their welfare?
Removing the horses from Heath is not an option. Stabling them is too expensive. In any case, why should hundreds of years of cultural norms linked to Roma and Irish heritage be put aside for the sake of a BESS with a 40-year lifespan? That would be a breach of the 2010 Equalities Act.
Special connections with children
The travelling community and their horses have strong bonds. Distress of any kind directly affects the relationship between horse, and horse to human. This is never more true than with regard to children.
According to a Department for Education report published in 2010, which reinforces anecdotal evidence, children with a traveller heritage are more likely to have special needs and be neurodivergent, autistic or ADHD, and are four times more likely to be excluded from school for their behaviour. The children’s relationships with these highly sentient animals and the cultural connection they have with them form part of a safe space for children who continue to struggle in the mainstream. Without their horses with whom they feel ‘at one’, a vital part of themselves would be destroyed.
In requesting a response to this article from Harmony Energy, a spokesperson has told Yorkshire Bylines: “The land we are seeking to develop is privately owned and separate from the land used for grazing. Low carbon and renewable energy projects have historically been located in farmed areas, quite often with livestock and horses surrounding them. This includes several of our projects that we’ve successfully built out to date. We encourage ongoing conversations to support clarity around how the project may impact the local area.”
