Acorn Bioenergy is seeking permission to build a large-scale anaerobic digestion plant on agricultural land off Ashton Road, metres from the Cotswold Lakes SSSI, and within the setting of the villages of Ashton Keynes and South Cerney. This is not a decision about renewable energy. It is a decision about where renewable energy belongs.
Acorn Bioenergy describes its plans as a "renewable gas generation facility" that will "support local farmers." The supporting brochure features stock imagery of wheat fields and rural tranquillity.
The reality is an industrial-scale chemical process plant , multiple-storey fermentation tanks, gas upgrading equipment, digestate storage lagoons, a biogas flare, and continuous HGV traffic, proposed for agricultural land within the setting of one of the South West's most significant wildlife landscapes.
The company is backed by venture capital and has never yet operated a plant at this scale. Its most recent proposal, at Spring Grove Farm in Suffolk, was unanimously refused by the county council in June 2025.
This campaign is not opposed to anaerobic digestion, to renewable energy, or to supporting British farming. All are necessary. What we oppose is the placement of a large industrial facility immediately beside a nationally protected wildlife site and a rural tourism economy that depends entirely on its quiet character.
The Cotswold Lakes complex, 177 lakes across 2,000 hectares, was granted Site of Special Scientific Interest status in 2021 in recognition of its national importance for breeding and wintering birds. Introducing an industrial facility into this setting risks direct harm to water quality, air quality, and species that rely on undisturbed habitat.
The plant will require a steady flow of heavy goods vehicles bringing feedstock and removing digestate on roads that are narrow, winding and already under strain from visitors, school traffic and cyclists. When a comparable Acorn proposal came before Suffolk County Council, councillors found 148 additional HGV and tractor movements per day at peak.
Every planning application for a biogas plant promises 'negligible' odour. The subsequent track record across the UK, Cannock, Ballymena, Farleigh Wallop, Stockton-on-Tees, Rothwell, tells a different story. Hydrogen sulphide and ammonia are both produced during anaerobic digestion, detectable by humans at fractions of a part per billion.
The proximity of the proposed site to lakes, watercourses and underlying aquifers is a material concern. Digestate spills from UK AD plants have repeatedly polluted watercourses, a Somerset operator was prosecuted after digestate flowed into the River Parrett. In this location, the consequences of any incident would be severe and, in parts, irreversible.
The Cotswold Lakes draws more than one million visitors a year. The holiday parks, watersports operators, pubs, cafes, cottages and outdoor businesses that employ local people depend on an intact, peaceful setting. An industrial biogas facility at the edge of the Park is incompatible with the visitor economy it sits beside.
Anaerobic digestion involves the production, storage and handling of methane. UK AD plants have suffered explosions, fires, and lightning-triggered tank failures. In December 2020 at Avonmouth, four workers were killed. This is a documented hazard, not a hypothetical one, and it has no place next to the Cotswold Lakes.
Acorn Bioenergy markets the Ashton Keynes plant as renewable. But because there is no local gas grid connection, every cubic metre of biomethane has to be trucked over 40 miles to Banbury, and feedstock has to be trucked in from a catchment radius of at least 21 miles. The result is a permanent stream of HGV and farm vehicle movements through narrow rural lanes, and a transport carbon footprint the application does not advertise.
HGV and farm vehicle movements through surrounding villages
Minimum catchment radius for feedstock farms
Distance HGVs must haul gas to Banbury (no local grid)
Dedicated HGV gas-export trips to Banbury, every day, for 25 years
21-mile feedstock catchment around the proposed plant at Ashton Keynes, sweeping in farms across the Cotswold villages, and the road route HGVs must take to haul biomethane over 40 miles to Banbury. Drag the map to explore the affected area.
Tonnes CO₂ emissons over the 25-year operating life of the plant.
Lifetime HGV and farm vehicle miles on Wiltshire's rural lanes.
Times around the planet, by HGV, every single year.
The equivalent of pushing an extra ~5 million miles of diesel HGV and farm-vehicle traffic through the Cotswolds every year, for a quarter of a century, to produce gas that has to be trucked away because there is no pipeline to take it.
In June 2025, Suffolk County Council's Development and Regulation Committee voted unanimously to refuse Acorn Bioenergy's application for a near-identical anaerobic digestion plant at Spring Grove Farm, on the edge of Withersfield and Haverhill. The application was described in committee as "frivolous" and "a waste of public money".
"This proposal has clear and deep negative impacts on the communities of Withersfield and Haverhill. … It is completely out of keeping with the surrounding landscape, and it threatens the important gateway area.", Suffolk County Council planning committee, June 2025
The grounds for refusal at Suffolk included: harm to landscape and gateway character, unacceptable traffic impacts, flood risk (Acorn's site was in Flood Zone 3), lack of genuine local benefit, industrial scale out of keeping with the area, and near- unanimous community opposition. Every one of those concerns applies with greater force at Ashton Keynes , where the setting is a nationally designated wildlife site and a million-visitor tourism economy.
Acorn Bioenergy chose not to appeal the Suffolk decision. This is not a company retreating from a single bad site. It is a business model that repeatedly targets the wrong kind of location.
Every anaerobic digestion planning application in the UK promises the same things: contained odour, robust safety systems, minimal impact. The record of UK AD plants already in operation tells a more complicated story. These are all publicly documented incidents from the last decade.
A biosolids silo at a sewage and food-waste AD site exploded on 3 December 2020, killing four workers including a 16-year-old apprentice. The site produced biomethane for local bus operators.
Lightning struck biogas tanks at Severn Trent Green Power's Cassington facility, destroying three of the site's five tanks. More than 40 fire and rescue personnel attended. Safety experts warned the risk was 'well-known' and foreseeable.
An 11-metre-high metal tank at Bio Dynamic's AD plant exploded while workers were cutting pipework. One man lost his leg. The operator was later fined more than £300,000 by the HSE.
A Facebook group titled 'Cannock tip, stop the stench' attracted hundreds of members and a petition to the Environment Agency neared 1,000 signatures, with residents arguing odour from the local AD plant had devalued their homes.
County and borough councillors appealed to the Environment Agency to shut down a local AD plant due to a 'most unpleasant' smell affecting hundreds of homes for sustained periods.
The Environment Agency prosecuted and fined the operator of a North East AD plant thousands of pounds for a documented failure to control odour emissions from the site over an extended period.
Planning decisions are made on the weight of evidence and the strength of local representation. One clear, policy-grounded objection counts for far more than a hundred generic ones. Here is how to give yours the best chance of being counted.
The only submission that carries legal weight is a formal objection lodged with Wiltshire Council quoting reference PL/2023/03359. Use our template below and personalise it.
Get the templateFollow the Object Now button above to the Wiltshire Council Planning site. Leave a Comment. This logs your objection.
Dr Roz Savage MP has already objected. Parish councils, ward councillors and neighbouring parishes all carry weight as statutory consultees.
Read MP's letterShare this site, raise the issue at community meetings. A visible, informed community is the single biggest factor in refusal.
Copy, edit and personalise. Wiltshire Council will give more weight to responses that cite specific planning policies, reference site-specific concerns, and are written in your own words, so please do edit freely before sending.
Acorn Bioenergy and its supporters make several arguments for the plant. Here are the ones that come up most often, and why they don't change the planning case.
Planning decisions are shaped in narrow windows. If you care about the Cotswold Lakes, now is the moment that matters most. Submit your objection today.
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