Councillors want the Environment Agency to investigate smells blamed on the Cattlegate Farm plant, which its operator says can take 52,000 tonnes a year.

Cuffley’s borough councillors have put the smells residents have been complaining about in front of Full Council, in a motion asking the council to demand a full Environment Agency investigation.

The motion went to the council meeting on Wednesday 16 September. It was submitted by Councillor Brian Seeger and seconded by Councillor George Michaelides, two of the three members for the Northaw and Cuffley ward. It names the source residents blame: the Willen Biogas and composting facility at Cattlegate Farm.

Nothing in the motion establishes that the plant is the cause. It says the smells are “believed to be coming from” it, and that is where the matter stands: the Environment Agency regulates the site, and it is the Environment Agency the motion asks to find out.

What the motion does do is put on the public record what people in Cuffley say they are living with. In the council’s own words, the smells are “blighting the lives of residents”:

  • stopping them enjoying their gardens and walks in the countryside
  • forcing them to shut windows and doors on the hottest days of the year
  • requiring laundry hung outside to be re-washed because it has taken on the smell
  • “even causing children at Cuffley School to feel sick because of the smell when outside in the playground”

The motion also asks that any investigation look at mental health as well as physical effects, and offers the council’s help to the Environment Agency, “including by sharing the many complaints received by the Council’s Environmental Health officers”. It does not say how many complaints that is.

What is actually permitted at Cattlegate Farm

The plant has an Enfield postal address, EN2 8AU, which is why it is easy to assume it is somebody else’s problem. It is not. The Environment Agency’s own public register records the local authority for both permits at the site as Welwyn Hatfield, and the borough’s planning records put it in the Northaw and Cuffley ward and parish.

Two permits are in force there, both held by Willen Biogas Ltd and both listed as “Effective”:

Permit What it covers Issued
GB3334AP A23 biological treatment facility 8 May 2012
BB3601GJ SR2012 No 7 composting facility 30 September 2015

The scale comes from the operator. Willen Biogas says on its own website that its green waste facility “has been operational since 2012 and is able to receive a capacity of 25,000 tonnes per annum”, and that its anaerobic digestion plant is a “new 27,000 TPA waste to energy plant” generating electricity for the grid and fertiliser for the land. That is capacity for 52,000 tonnes of organic waste a year between the two.

Willen Biogas Ltd is company 07933651, incorporated on 2 February 2012, active, with its registered office at Cattlegate Farm and its stated business recorded as the manufacture of gas.

We searched the Environment Agency’s enforcement action register on 20 September. It returns no entry for Willen Biogas Ltd.

The odour warning is fourteen years old

This is the part of the record nobody has gone back to. When the 25,000-tonne composting site was applied for, Hertfordshire County Council’s own planning officers told councillors to turn it down, and one of their two reasons was the smell.

The report went to the county’s Development Control Committee on 28 February 2012. Hertfordshire is the waste planning authority here, not the borough. The recommendation was refusal, and reason B read in full:

The proposed development could give rise to odour with the potential to adversely affect local amenity due to the proposed location of the site.

The same report sets out how close the site is to things people use. It is 1.5 hectares of former arable land, about 400 metres north of the farm buildings themselves. From there:

  • 300 metres to the boundary of Cuffley Football Club’s pitches
  • 500 metres to the nearest boundary of Cuffley School’s grounds
  • about 600 metres to the school building itself

There is a reason it sits out in the open fields rather than in the farmyard. The report explains that the Environment Agency “indicated that they would not grant a Standard Rules Permit for composting operations that would take place within 250m of residential properties”, and the existing composting in the farmyard was inside 250 metres of the farmhouse. Moving it to comply pushed it out of the farm complex, on to open Green Belt land, and closer to Cuffley.

The older operation was limited to 5,000 tonnes a year. The application was for five times that.

Objections at the time were not small. The county consulted 201 properties and received 573 objection letters, plus petitions carrying 493 and 134 signatures. Northaw and Cuffley Parish Council objected, citing the proximity to a primary school, play areas, care homes and playing fields, and naming noise and odour. Enfield Council objected and warned that “controlling odour and the enforcement of any breaches could be difficult”. CPRE objected. Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council, on the record in the same report, “support the proposal in principle subject to confirmation on a number of points”.

What we could not confirm

Three things are missing, and we are not going to fill them with guesswork.

The council has not published minutes for the 16 September meeting, so we cannot yet say what Full Council resolved on the motion. The webcast is linked from the agenda. We will report the resolution when the minutes appear.

Hertfordshire County Council’s online planning register returned no results for Cattlegate, for Northaw, or for the application number, when we searched it on 20 September, so we could not retrieve the county’s decision notice on the 2011 application. What is not in doubt is that the facility operates today: the Environment Agency’s register says both permits are effective, and the operator advertises both plants.

We found no published Environment Agency statement about the current complaints.

What it means for you

If you are getting the smell, the complaint that counts goes to the regulator, not to the council. Both permits at Cattlegate Farm are Environment Agency permits, and an odour management plan is part of what a composting permit requires.

  • Report it online through the government’s report a smell from a waste facility, industrial site or farm service, or by phone on the Environment Agency incident hotline, 0800 80 70 60, a 24-hour service.
  • Have three things ready: where you think the smell is coming from, where you noticed it, and when you noticed it. Giving an email address is optional, but it is how you get a reference number and how you send photos.
  • Report every occasion separately. A pattern of dated reports is the evidence an investigation runs on; one call describing six months is not.
  • The borough council’s environmental health team can be reached through its noise, pests and pollution pages. The council has no odour-specific reporting page, and no power to vary or revoke an Environment Agency permit.

Our running coverage of decisions in the borough is on the Welwyn Hatfield planning news page, including the 35 homes proposed at Colesdale Farm in Cuffley, which is still waiting for a committee date.

Cattlegate Farm: the permits, the capacity and the distances Two Environment Agency permits are in force at Cattlegate Farm: GB3334AP, an A23 biological treatment facility, issued 8 May 2012, and BB3601GJ, an SR2012 No 7 composting facility, issued 30 September 2015. The operator states capacity of 25,000 tonnes a year of green waste and a 27,000 tonne per annum anaerobic digestion plant, 52,000 tonnes in total. The 2012 county committee report gives distances from the composting site of 300 metres to Cuffley Football Club pitches, 500 metres to the boundary of Cuffley School grounds and about 600 metres to the school building. Cattlegate Farm: what is permitted, and how close it is Both permits sit in Welwyn Hatfield borough, in the Northaw and Cuffley ward, despite the Enfield postal address. Two Environment Agency permits, both effective GB3334AP A23 biological treatment facility Issued 8 May 2012 BB3601GJ SR2012 No 7 composting facility Issued 30 September 2015 Capacity, as stated by the operator 25,000 tonnes a year, green waste 27,000 tonnes a year, anaerobic digestion 52,000 tonnes in total How close the composting site is, from the 2012 county committee report 300m to Cuffley Football Club pitches · 500m to the boundary of Cuffley School grounds · about 600m to the school building Sources: Environment Agency public register; willenbiogas.co.uk; Hertfordshire County Council Development Control Committee, 28 February 2012. Graphic by Welwyn Online.
Graphic by Welwyn Online. The two permits cover separate activities on the same farm.

Sources

All sources checked on 20 September 2026.