A WASTE-FUELLED power station at Fourstones would be a blot on the landscape, according to local residents.

They turned out in force at a public inquiry on Wednesday to voice their objections to plans for an anaerobic digestion and combined heat and power plant on land at Park Shield.

Held in Newbrough Town Hall, the inquiry was triggered after developers, JFS Park Shield Farm Biogas Ltd, appealed against Northumberland County Council’s decision to turn down the scheme.

As well as challenging the decision, they were also critical of the time it took the council to rule on the application.

But residents remained vociferous in their objections to the plan, pointing out it would spoil a “jewel in the crown” of the Scouting movement – a cairn marking the site of the first camp held by Lord Baden Powell.

Dave Mowbray, on behalf of the Scout Association, told the hearing that the view enjoyed by thousands of visitors from across the world who travel to Fourstones to take part in the Baden Powell Walk, would be ruined.

He said: “We have one of the jewels in the crown of the Scouting movement in our back yard – the cairn where the first- ever camp was held.

“The walk to it would be destroyed because of the noise, smell and traffic.”

He was supported by Walwick resident Adrian Brewster, who said: “This power station is enormous.

“It would be about four times the size of a normal farm anaerobic digester and would be a blot on the landscape.

“I can see no justification for it.”

But Steve Barker, representing the applicant, said: “This is a low-carbon energy project to generate electricity.”

“That electricity has to be put in to the National Grid in order for it to be beneficial, and doing that is far from simple.”

He told the Planning Inspectorate’s Katie Peerless that the nine-acre site near the current Fourstones Sub-station was chosen so the plant could be connected by an underground wire and would be in a “sustainable location” in the heart of the farms feeding it.

He argued that the council’s Northumberland Waste Local Plan, adopted in December 2001, contained “old and outdated” policies on anaerobic digestion plants which did not take into account current national policies, or the current energy needs of the country.

And he said that advice from the Environment Agency stated that material put into an anaerobic digestion system – including farmyard manure, slurry, chicken manure and grass silage – was not classified as waste.

One farm at Humshaugh, he said, had already been lined up to supply the plant, while expressions of interest have been collected from dozens of others from across the district.

But the council’s senior planning officer, Joe Nugent, said: “I contacted the Environment Agency to clarify this point and it confirmed that slurry and manure, which is not produced on the site where it is intended to be used, is considered as waste.”

The appeal also heard that in a survey of local farmers, 38 were against the plan on the grounds of the extra traffic, noise and visual impact it would have on the landscape.

Mrs Peerless said: “One of the reasons this proposal was refused is that it is not on a farm – it’s in open countryside.”

The application involves the construction of a 1,000KW anaerobic digestion and combined heat and power plant, with two digester tanks, four storage tanks, two power units and eight storage clamps, plus ancillary buildings and hardstanding.

A site visit was included as part of the hearing and a decision is expected within six weeks.