A public meeting on Monday night heard around 100 residents of Marsham quiz the team behind a plan to build a £4m composting plant on the edge of their village.

A public meeting on Monday night heard around 100 residents of Marsham quiz the team behind a plan to build a £4m composting plant on the edge of their village.

Landowner Roger Crane, council representatives and managers from Norfolk Environmental Waste Services (News) faced some angry questions at the village hall.

Concerns included increased traffic, smell, noise and the industrialisation of a rural area.

Villager Lesley Willcocks said the proposal was “unreasonable” and contrary to local planning policy.

“It is industrialisation, a possible health hazard and heavy traffic will increase.”

Several villagers suggested the now closed airbase at RAF Coltishall as an alternative site, with one man suggesting the prisoners housed there under a separate Home Office plan could staff the facility.

Stuart Reynolds, representing News, insisted the facility would be “very, very different” to one at Waterbeach which villagers had visited and which had raised smell concerns.

Mr Crane, managing director of the family farming company on whose land the business would be sited and who will use a large amount of the compost made, said: “The last thing I am going to do is denigrate the quality of my land.”