Collard wants to compost 10,000 tonnes of green waste a year at Copse Farm, Eversley, with about 14 lorry movements a day. Comments close 22 October.
A waste firm has applied to compost up to 10,000 tonnes of garden and green waste a year on farmland at Eversley. The open-air site would sit at Copse Farm, off the A327 south of the village, about four miles north of Fleet.
The applicant is Collard Group, the recycling and aggregates company based at Eversley Haulage Park on Brickhouse Hill. Hampshire County Council, not Hart, will decide the application, because it is a waste development. Comments close on Thursday 22 October. (Hampshire County Council public notice)
What Collard wants to build
The application, reference HCC/2026/0644, is for a “small scale open windrow composting facility”. Windrows are long, domed heaps of shredded green waste that are turned as they rot down into compost.
The company’s planning statement, written by consultants Tetra Tech, sets out:
- up to 10,000 tonnes of green waste a year
- a 1.7 hectare site, with a 1 hectare working yard
- windrows up to 4 metres high, inside a continuous 4 metre planted earth bund
- shredding “on a campaign basis”, not every day
- a weighbridge and a modular site office
- a sealed, impermeable yard draining to a lagoon, whose water would damp down the heaps
- working hours of 07:30 to 17:00, Monday to Friday
- the equivalent of 1.5 full-time jobs
Most of the green waste would come from Collard’s own waste transfer station at Eversley Haulage Park, about a mile away, plus the farm itself. Finished compost would go back onto the farm’s fields or leave on the same lorries that bring waste in. The statement says the company’s founder owns Copse Farm and more than 300 acres around it.
The site is now part hardstanding used for farm storage and part an informal motocross track, according to the statement. It lies in Flood Zone 1, the lowest risk category.
The lorries
Lorries would reach the site from the A327 along the farm’s existing access road. That road is also a public bridleway. The statement says access along it will be kept open, while noting it does not connect to the wider path network.
Collard’s transport statement assumes six-tonne loads. On that basis, 10,000 tonnes means about 1,667 deliveries a year, or six to seven lorries a working day. Each one comes and goes, so that is 12 to 14 lorry movements a day.
For scale, the same report includes a week-long traffic count on the A327 near The Welsh Drive, taken in September 2024. It recorded 12,891 vehicles a day, of which 419 were HGVs.
The two reports do not quite agree on hours. The planning statement gives 07:30 to 17:00. The transport statement works its numbers on “a standard 07:00 to 17:00 Monday to Friday operating pattern”. If permission is granted, the hours in the conditions are the ones that count.
Smell, dust and noise
Composting can smell, and it releases bioaerosols, the airborne fungal spores and bacteria that come off rotting heaps. The application includes separate reports on both.
The odour assessment lists six neighbouring properties. The nearest home is Lower Copse House, 298 metres from the site boundary, followed by Kiln Copse Lodge at 310 metres and Hill Cottage at 369 metres. It rates the risk of odour at all of them as “negligible”.
The Environment Agency expects a site-specific bioaerosol assessment wherever people live or work within 250 metres of an open composting operation. Every property in the applicant’s table is further away than that. Its bioaerosol report puts the site “at most at ‘Low Risk’” because of that distance.
The noise report predicts that noise from the site will be below existing background levels at every neighbouring property during the day.
All three are the applicant’s own reports. The county’s officers and consultees will test them.
What the consultees have said so far
One response is on the register. Hampshire County Council, in its separate role as the lead local flood authority, wrote on 1 October that it has no objection. It supports the plan to reuse rainwater on site and describes composting operations as “hazardous”, which is why the Environment Agency requires a sealed yard.
It still wants more. The authority says no hydraulic calculations were supplied, and asks for:
- a water balance assessment showing the drainage works
- evidence that the yard’s flood storage will not be overtopped
- contingency plans to remove flood water to a treatment facility
It recommends planning conditions requiring a detailed drainage scheme and long-term maintenance arrangements before work starts.
Next to an active quarry and ancient woodland
The planning statement places the site:
- 90 metres south of woodland classified as ancient woodland
- 540 metres from the Thames Basin Heaths Special Protection Area and Bramshill SSSI
- 900 metres from Bramshill Quarry
- about 1 kilometre from Eversley and from Eversley Cross
The land immediately west is a restored 1970s landfill. Collard is also one of the two operators of Bramshill Quarry, which has asked to keep working until the end of 2031.
A great crested newt survey found none in the ponds tested. The plans include species-rich grassland on the bund, native scrub and tree planting, and extra grassland in the next field to meet biodiversity net gain rules.
What it means for you
- If you live near Lower Eversley Copse, Up Green or along the A327 south of Eversley, this is the application to read. The full set of 20 documents is on the county’s planning register.
- Comment by Thursday 22 October. Use “comment on this application” on the register page, or write to Development Management, Universal Services, The Castle, Winchester SO23 8UD. The council will not accept anonymous comments, and your name and address will be published.
- Comments on planning grounds carry weight. Lorry numbers, hours, smell, drainage and the bridleway are all material. Who the applicant is, or what it has done elsewhere, generally is not.
- This is not a Hart decision. Hart District Council will be consulted, but the county decides. Other Hart planning is on our planning news page.
Sources
- Hampshire County Council public notice for Copse Farm, 1 October 2026, for the proposal, the applicant and the 22 October deadline.
- Planning register entry HCC/2026/0644 for the dates received and validated, the agent and the full document list. The register sits behind a disclaimer page.
- Planning statement (Tetra Tech, September 2026) for the tonnage, site area, bund, layout, hours, jobs, feedstock, distances and site history.
- Transport statement for the delivery and movement estimates, the September 2024 A327 traffic count and the 07:00 to 17:00 operating assumption.
- Odour risk assessment, bioaerosol risk assessment and noise impact assessment (Tetra Tech, August 2026) for the receptor distances and conclusions.
- Hampshire County Council lead local flood authority response, reference SWM/2026/0697, 1 October 2026, for the no-objection response and the conditions it recommends.
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