SECRET plans to turn former farm land at Westwell, near Ashford, into a waste recycling power plant have been uncovered by the Kentish Express newspaper. A leaked document marked "Commercial in Confidence" gives provisional proposals for the development of renewable energy through a rail-linked energy centre at Beechbrook farm on Ashford's north-west edge.

It would receive refuse from across Kent, Medway, East Sussex and South London. But the document does not provide dedtails of the incinerator that would be required to convert it into electricity.

At present the site is a temporary rail terminal with a dozen sidings to receive aggregate and rails for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. Eighty per cent of materials are coming to the area by rail including steel from Germany, concrete sleepers from Derbyshire, and sand ballast from the Isle of Grain.

The 100-acre site is owned by rail link landowners London and Continental Property. When permission was given for the CTRL rail head it was on condition that it would be returned to Grade II agricultural land.

Although that decision was taken at the highest levels, there has been some local concern about its future.

It is understood that Luton-based KTI Energy Limited has been seeking approval for their plans from SE Region of the National Farmers Union. They want to take over the site in 2005 when, instead of dismatling the installations, they want up to 30-acres and at least two rail sidings to become dedicated to the plant.

The plant would then handle household, trade and commercial waste and "biomass" - defined as straw, poultry litter, and wood. Under the first phase the design will be able to handle 400,000 tonnes of waste and 180,000 tonnes a year to generate electricity.

The plan is for most to be transported to the plant by rail on freight trains collecting from sidings at Hither Green, Crayford, Hoo Junction, Sittingbourne, Margate, Dover, Canterbury and Mountfield in East Sussex.

The estimated 315 tonnes a day generated by Ashford and Shepway districts would be delivered to the site by road.