A CONTROVERSIAL renewable energy scheme which would have led to a huge expansion of a pig farm in a village popular with tourists has been rejected by planners due to the noise and smell it would create.

Hambleton District Council's planning committee heard JFS Clay Bank Farm Biogas wanted to produce to 1MW of electricity, some of which would be sold to the National Grid, by building an anaerobic digester heat and power plant on 4.2 hectares off grassland at Church Farm, Kilburn, near Thirsk.

Anaerobic digestion sees organic matter broken down by micro-organisms, creating digestate,which can be used as a soil improver and fertiliser, and biogas, which is burned to drive a turbine to generate heat and electricity.

The meeting was told plant, which would include two 16m-high digester tanks, four silage clamps, each measuring 25m by 45m, a digestate storage lagoon, a 12.5m-high drying building and two substations, while the proposal also included building four 64m-long agricultural buildings.

The digester would be fed with 23,318 tonnes of farmyard manure from the farm's 2,000 pigs and 600 beef cattle, an additional 2,000 pigs, cattle slurry, chicken manure, grass silage and hybrid rye annually.

A JFS spokesman said while anaerobic digestion represented a vast opportunity for renewable energy production, it was largely underdeveloped in the region.

He said: "It would be expected that the implementation of the proposed scheme will significantly reduce environmental impact in terms of odour."

The proposal generated 106 objections, including claims from Kilburn Parish Council that smell and noise from an increase in pig numbers would be intolerable and the project was of an industrial scale.

The North York Moors National Park Authority added the development would blot one of the region's best-known landscapes and tourism body Welcome to Yorkshire said the plant would hit visitor numbers in the village, where the Mouseman Visitor Centre employs 42 staff and attracts 20,000 people annually.

Other concerns included a rise in heavy traffic in the area, which features numerous narrow lanes.

Before voting to reject the proposals, councillors praised the plan, but said it had been in appropriately sited in a village that was “a gem within Hambleton district”, that was known internationally due to the Mouseman centre and the White Horse.

Speaking after the meeting, Mouseman director Ian Cartwright said that he was relieved the scheme had been dismissed.

“We didn’t want to see our village ruined”, he said.