Tonight's public meeting to discuss a controversial proposal to build an anaerobic digester plant in Benenden has been cancelled at short notice after the developer said it could not send a representative because of illness.

The meeting had been scheduled by the Benenden Amenity and Countryside Society to take place on Wednesday to discuss proposals from Shropshire-based Evergreen Gas to construct a heat and power plant at Forest Farm off Ninevah Lane.

The farm is owned by Gordon Reynolds and his family. Mr Reynolds is the chairman of Benenden Parish Council.

He said: “We are fourth generation farmers. I have lived here 60 years. This application will enable us to farm sustainably.”

The application states the plant would use 3,500 tonnes of cattle slurry, 3,250 tons of farm-yard manure, 1,000 tonnes of poultry manure and more than 8,000 tonnes of green waste annually to generate enough electricity to power 1,100 homes.

The power would first supply the farm and then be sold to the National Grid.

Evergreen Gas claims that all the materials to be used in the digester are produced on the farm and therefore there would be no extra traffic on the road network, but Mr Reynolds clarified that. He said: “The poultry waste is from another nearby farm, but already comes to us. That only amounts to a trailer-load a week.”

The company said that because cattle and poultry manure is often stored for lengthly periods before being distributed as fertilizer across the fields, the digester would actually reduce unpleasant smells. The waste that emerges from the digester for spreading is dried and less odorous.

In any case there were only seven homes with a kilometre radius of the site, it said.

Much of that is disputed by neighbours who claim the farm is to not big enough to generate that much waste, which will in consequence be shipped in along the area’s narrow lanes.

One neighbour, Lady Ure of Netters Hall, said the proposals would create a “very ugly, permanent feature in the landscape of an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.”

Another neighbour, Abigal Bracken of Great Nineveh House, said: “Mr Reynolds' farm is not big enough to generate this waste. We have spoken to farming friends and they predict it will need eight articulated lorries full each day to keep such a big plant going.”

Mr Reynolds dismissed such as allegations as nonsense. He said: “Nothing new will be coming to the farm that doesn’t already come here."

He criticised neighbours for failing to take up an invitation to tour the farm and have the proposals explained to them.

He said: “They don’t understand farming or what it is we do here.”

This public meeting has been re-arranged for Wednesday at 7.30pm, in Benenden Village Hall.

Planning application number 15/502107 refers.