ANGRY villagers are fighting plans for a major £4.5m expansion of a mushroom factory over fears it will lead to traffic accidents with delivery lorries.

Greyfriars UK, of Wath, near Ripon, wants to develop its facility despite the locals’ protests.

Plans have been submitted to Harrogate Borough Council for a 96m x 71m building to include 12 growing rooms.

The scheme also includes a packing store, cold store, offices and a staff ancillary block to go on to a green field site.

The Wath Against Mushrooms (Wam) group has been set up by locals to fight the scheme to go on a site at Tanfield Lane, just outside the village.

Wath and Newton Conyers Parish Council has also backed the villagers in opposing the scheme.

Councillor Judith Graham, chairwoman of the parish council, said: "The company has been there for nearly 20 years.

"Over the last five years there has been an on-going problem with lorries going to it through the village.

"There has been no fatality but lots of near misses as up to 114 articulated lorries go through Wath each week to there."

A Wam spokesman said: "Greyfriars managers have themselves admitted this development will be the largest mushroom processing facility of its type in Europe.

"This business already means local villages are blighted both day and night by 114 lorry movements a week.

"It cannot make sense to allow Europe’s largest mushroom facility to be built in a rural area served by narrow roads.

"This is an industrial-sized operation – not a farm as the proposals claim – and it should be located on a dedicated business park.

"If permission is granted, the current management team can just sell the business and walk away. "But the local community will be left with the devastating impact of this development for many years."

The villagers are also concerned about other issues from the development including light pollution.

A residents petition is to be sent around the village and the borough council wants all comments to be submitted by June 19.

John Smith, chairman of Greyfriars, said: "I have spoken to both the Melmerby and Wath parish councils about this.

"We were able to explain to them that we are building a facility that will reduce the number of food miles by two million a year.

"We get some of our mushrooms from Poland and with this we taking delivery of compost to grow them instead.

"We can control the route the compost will take and so we can use a northern route and miss out the village all together.

"This plan will see a reduction in the amount of traffic going through the village by a least 12 per cent a week.

"It’s a major investment and we won’t be walking away from it and the borough council can put a condition on that it has to be used for an agricultural use.

"We think the locals’ concerns are probably misplaced and we hope that through discussion with them we can allay them."

Mr Smith said he hoped to have the plant open by January if it was approved and that it would provide 60 local jobs.

The site, which is not overlooked, he added would also have more screening than planning law said was needed.

The parish council is holding a public meeting at the Old School House, in Wath, on Wednesday, June 17, at 7pm to discuss the plans.