London: When your next-door neighbour is the King, it’s a good idea to keep your head down, hints Roger Young, a Flitcham villager. Otherwise, it might just be a case of off with it.

“You can expect to see me hung,” the 87-year-old says after he agrees, following some hesitation, to stop and talk. “Hung, drawn and quartered,” adds his wife, Patsy, 86.

They are not the first people in this pretty Domesday Book village, which forms part of the monarch’s Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, whom we approached in the hope of a brief chat.

But there is a distinct sense of nervousness. Most decline to speak at all, politely swinging wreathed doors closed, or leaving us standing on doormats that are adorned with pheasant motifs.

“They’ve got lawyers that would tie us up in knots,” says one chap ominously, before scurrying up a lane and disappearing into the winter gloom. “Call me Richard,” he calls back enigmatically, when asked for a name.

What is prompting this unsettling whiff of nervous energy amid the village’s sedately mulched front gardens and its orderly, boot-stacked porches?

Fear of a stink is what. In October, villagers caught wind of a proposed organic fertiliser storage lagoon 3956 square metres in size (including screening).

It is set to hold nearly 10,000 cubic metres of farm digestate, the matter left after anaerobic digestion, usually of animal manure as well as crop waste.

If approved, it will be built about 1.5 kilometres away from the village on farm land, which is also less than 1.5 kilometres from Anmer Hall, the Norfolk home of the Prince and Princess of Wales.

Many residents have concerns, principally about odours and gases drifting across the local primary school and homes, compounded by disappointment that they had to stumble upon the proposals.

The plans are contained in a Lawful Development Certificate application, rather than a planning application that would be considered by the borough council’s planning committee, bypassing much of the accompanying formal discussion and hoops of the latter. Including, it seems, any odour impact assessment.

If granted, the project will not need planning permission.

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https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/king-pong-villagers-kick-up-stink-over-charles-fertiliser-plan-20251229-p5nqh4.html

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