RESIDENTS say they are still being forced to deal with hideous odours overpowering their homes from Halstead’s waste plant.

Last Sunday, one of the hottest days of the year, was ruined for homeowners living near Tamar Energy’s anaerobic digestion plant, in the Bluebridge industrial estate.

Those living near the plant have complained of bad smells regularly coming from the site since it started testing in July 2014, leading to an investigation by the Environment Agency sparked by 300 complaints.

Residents were e-mailed on Friday to say that there was an issue and they may experience some disruption.

However, Brenda Lake, who has lived off Halstead Road for 33 years, said there was no preparing for what followed.

She said: “It has been a lot better, we had a big meeting earlier on in the year, it did take several attempts to get any kind of an apology from the director.

“We really have gone through hell with this.

“There are only a few of us living near the plant, but when the wind is in a westerly direction we get the full force of it and there is no way to detract from the smell.

“Yesterday it was in every single room of the house, there was no escaping it.

“All my washing stank, it was in the garage, in all of the outbuildings, we could still smell it when we were going to bed last night.”

Mrs Lake added: “We are still fighting this, and people need to be aware of that.

“There are so few of us and we have all spent hours and hours making complaints.

“Every time we get a bad smell we report it to the Environment Agency, we spend so much of our time fighting against this and nothing happens, we are just left to put up with it.

“It truly is horrendous, and we have all really had enough of it now.

“It really does have a huge effect on our life but I am not sure what else we can do.”

Efe Sowho, Tamar Halstead plant manager, said: “As part of the stringent monitoring process of our Halstead facility, we detected a minor issue on Friday, July 22.

“We immediately contacted residents living nearest to the plant to inform them that, to enable us to resolve it, a small amount of odour may be released.”