Controversial pig farm plans spark village anger
File photo of pigs. Plans for a pig farm in Aldborough in north Norfolk have drawn many objections from nearby residents. Picture: Simon Parker - Credit: Archant
Almost £4,000 has been raised in a village campaign to stop a pig farm development they fear could mean the “largest change in village life in many decades”.
The site off Aldborough Road, Aldborourgh, where there are plans to demolish four exisitng buildings to make way for two new pig sheds and another building. Picture: Google StreetView - Credit: Archant
Villagers in Aldborough, north Norfolk, are fighting the plans to build two 60-metre long sheds housing 1,900 pigs at Rectory Farm on Aldborough Road.
They have launched an online fundraising campaign which has so far netted just over £3,800, and engaged lawyers to write to North Norfolk District Council (NNDC) to contest the application for the plans, which have been lodged by D W Filby and Son of Rectory Road, Aldborough.
Phil Chapman, member of Aldborough and Thurgarton Parish Council, is one of those leading the campaign against the plans.
Mr Chapman said: “This is a rural agricultural area and we don’t object to farming or even to someone upgrading and modernising – it’s part of our life but this is not traditional farming with pigs in muddy fields or even in little huts in the fields. This is an industrial-size intensive factory.
“The buildings will be massive, and create huge volumes of manure and foul odour.”
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The application says the pig sheds would replace an existing set-up where 1,000 pigs are kept inside and 1,000 are kept outside, and that the new operation would be better for the animals and more environmentally-friendly than what is already there.
But Mr Chapman said no pigs had been kept on the site for years, so the plans were effectively for a new factory farming operation in a conservation area.
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He said: “If you knock on doors around the farm you will find people who say the same thing – no pigs for years.”
Mr Chapman said the development was likely to pollute the Scarrow Back, a nearby waterway which feeds into the River Bure.
But the application said the pollution from the site would be strictly controlled by legislation governed by the Environment Agency.
The pigs would be kept inside from when they are 28 days old until they reach 105kg - their ‘finished’ weight - after 20 weeks, when they would be taken off-site for slaughter.
D W Filby and Son declined to comment on the concerns when approached by this newspaper.
An NNDC spokesman said they could not comment because the application had not yet been decided.
