CONCERNED Winkleigh residents say many questions remain unanswered about a proposed multi-million pound green power-plant.

Their view follows a face-to-face meeting last Friday with Roger Barton, of Chumleigh-based Peninsula Power, the man behind the scheme.

Mr Barton says theBiomass gas plant, planned for the old airfield just outside the village, would create employment and be beneficial to the environment.

He says many questions will be answered by an environmental impact assessment carried out by consultants, which has to be submitted with a planning application.

But David Lawson, of the Winkleigh Society, said villagers came away from the meeting in the village hall still wanting more details about the gas plant.

He said: ?Mr Barton only wanted to talk about the process. He wasn?t prepared to answer questions that people wanted to put to him.

?He said he is going to put a website up when he puts planning permission in, and he cannot give any emissions profile until he has had an environmental impact assessment. It is just plain frightening for people.?

Mr Lawson said without more information about the scheme people would continue to feel ?extremely worried and concerned? about the proposal.

Mr Lawson said a major issue was the change of land use required to build the ?massive station? at the 12-acre old RAF airfield on the outskirts of Winkleigh.

He said such a large scale development was contrary to the Devon County Structure Plan, which had stated the airfield site would be for agriculture, tourism or light industry.

A meeting of the parish council-led working party, including invited village organisations, was held at the village hall last Friday with many people turning up, despite it not being an open public meeting.

A community liaison group was established for the exchange of information between the applicant and local residents.

Mr Barton said: ?We have got a lot of information we want to give to local people and the meeting was held to look at the means by which this interaction can be done.

?At the moment, we have a list of questions the liaison group has given to us. We are very happy to answer them, but some of the questions require answers that don?t even exist, but will be provided from the environmental impact assessment which we have to provide.?

Mr Barton said work on the environmental impact assessment was likely to begin next month, and during this period, an information evening and a public exhibition would be held in Winkleigh to keep people informed.

John Turner, parish council chairman said a further meeting of the working party was taking place in the village hall tonight (Thursday) although Mr Barton would not be attending on this occasion.

?The whole idea of this working party is to look at all sides of this, a lot of people are up in arms about this, but there are possible advantages like employment, which need to be considered before coming to a decision.?

Mr Turner said Mr Barton had been given three pages of questions which had been raised at a previous parish council meeting, which he said he would work through.

Mr Barton said his company had been awarded an £11.5-million grant under the Government?s Bio-Energy Capital Grants programme, towards the £37-million phase one cost of the project.

He forecasts the biomass project would create up to 100 jobs during construction, plus 40 full-time jobs once operational, with possible further new jobs when phase two was complete.

Mr Barton has indicated an intention to lodge a planning application later this year for the power plant which he believes would create enough green electricity to power 46,000 homes and businesses.