Update on massive gas facility in Cotswold tourism hotspot

Oxfordshire-based Acorn Bioenergy wants to build the industrial biodigester on land at Ashton Keynes, just 500 metres from the edge of neighbouring South Cerney in the heart of the Cotswold Water Park.

Wiltshire Council planning officials are recommending to members of the authority's Strategic Planning Committee that planning permission is granted when the matter - first announced in 2023 - comes before them next week.

Officers say the renewable energy, carbon reduction and rural economic benefits of the proposal outweigh local concerns over development in the countryside and the risk of noise, odour, light pollution, and potential harm to air quality.

The application site covers seven hectares of farmland - about the size of ten football pitches - on the Wiltshire/Gloucestershire border.

Although in Wiltshire, the proposed development at Ashton Down would be closer to the southwestern border of South Cerney.

Access would be off the Spine Road which, say the applicants, would give HGVs access to the site without going through villages.

The facility would process around 91,000 tonnes of agricultural feedstock a year, comprising crops including rye, maize, and grass, straw, farmyard manure, slurry and a small proportion of poultry litter - all of which would be shipped to the site from farms within a 10-mile radius.

It would produce around 10 million cubic metres of renewable biomethane a year - enough to supply 9,300 homes - which would be taken off-site by tanker to Banbury - 45 miles away - where the applicant has an injection hub into the gas network.

The facility would also produce 120,000 tonnes of natural digestate fertiliser a year, for local agricultural use, and high-grade CO₂ for commercial distribution.

The facility would consist of two nine-metre-tall (30ft) digesters with a diameter of 45 metres, and a 16.5 metre tall (55 ft) post-digester tank of 34 metres in diameter.

There would also be three silage clamps, a straw processing building, a chicken manure building, a CO₂ capture unit, and two covered digestate lagoons.

The council's own landscape office has objected to the proposals and the parish councils of Ashton Keynes, South Cerney, and Somerford Keynes have raised concerns.

Ashton Keynes Parish Council says it has "strong and continued objection" to the "industrial-scale development" which it says would harm tourism and bring added traffic to narrow roads.

The council fears light, noise and odour pollution and water contamination.

It says there would be "no local benefit" to residents.

South Cerney Parish Council shares the concerns of its neighbour, and raises a specific concern about the health of children attending Ann Edwards Primary School and playgroup.

More than 500 residents have written to the council objecting to the scheme.

The council says the scheme would create 100 jobs during the construction phase and 15 once the facility was completed. A further 35 jobs would be supported in agriculture.

They add that the scheme would "provide integrated support for the local farming community by recycling 91,000 tonnes per annum of agricultural by-products, supplying around 120,000 tonnes a year of natural digestate to improve soil health and crop yields, and offering long-term, stable income streams to farms through feedstock supply agreements."

But they concede that "in landscape terms, the proposal would give rise to a degree of localised landscape and visual harm arising from the introduction of large-scale infrastructure and engineered landform into an open countryside setting."

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