Wiltshire Council is set to decide on Acorn Bioenergy's proposed anaerobic digestion facility on the Wiltshire-Gloucestershire border, with planning officers recommending approval despite an objection from neighbouring Gloucestershire County Council over traffic impacts.
The seven-hectare site sits on agricultural land within the Cotswold Water Park, a tourism destination attracting around a million visitors a year, and lies closer to the Gloucestershire village of South Cerney than to any Wiltshire settlement.
The plant would process up to 91,000 tonnes of agricultural feedstock annually — including rotational break crops, straw, manure and a small quantity of poultry litter — sourced largely from farms within a 10-mile radius.
It would produce around 10 million cubic metres of biomethane a year, tankered to Acorn's gas injection hub at Banbury, alongside digestate fertiliser for local farmland and food-grade CO2 for commercial distribution.
The application was deferred at committee in April because Gloucestershire County Council, whose roads would carry the bulk of lorry movements, had not been consulted.
At that meeting, Wiltshire councillor Chuck Berry warned the facility would generate 200 vehicle movements a day on rural roads during harvest months.
Gloucestershire has since asked Wiltshire councillors to refuse the scheme, citing "the absence of a detailed origin-destination assessment, the lack of seasonal and peak flow analysis" and doubts over "the suitability of the rural highway network", concluding it cannot be satisfied that safe access can be achieved or that cumulative impacts on the road network would not be severe.
Wiltshire's planning officers acknowledge the scheme would cause "identifiable and localised landscape and visual harm", but advise that "significant weight is afforded to the renewable energy generation, carbon reduction, energy security and rural economic benefits of the proposal, which are considered to outweigh the identified harms."
Acorn Bioenergy’s Cotswold Water Park AD plans face decision
