Cotswolds 'green' motorway services gets thumbs-up from planners

With a grass roof on the petrol station and a vegetable patch beside the coach park, the concept for Britain's greenest motorway services may seem beset by contradictions. But planners have approved designs for the £35m Gloucester Gateway project which aims to reinvent the motorway pitstop for the carbon-conscious generation.

The new services, nestling on the edge of the Cotswolds between junctions 11a and 12 on the M5, will sell fuel to thousands of cars a week while at the same time trying to drive down carbon emissions by banning fast food chains and sourcing most of its food supplies from within a 30-mile radius.

The application has been fiercely opposed by local environmental campaigners, who fear it will scar the neighbouring designated area of outstanding natural beauty and warn that, far from reducing the environmental impact of the motorways, it will encourage more people to drive.

The developer, Westmorland – which already runs an independent services at Tebay on the M6 in Cumbria – says the project, due to be completed in 2013, is required under Department for Transport guidelines and will use a fifth of the energy of a conventional service area.

The car parks have been designed to allow for charging points for electric vehicles and the filling station can be adapted to bio-fuel pumps in the future. Inside, fast food concessions such as Burger King or McDonald's will be banned and instead the centrepiece of lunch will be a roast from a local farm. To avoid the anonymous atmosphere of many service stations it is designed to stress the attractions of the Gloucestershire area. The timber-framed buildings will be built of douglas fir from the nearby Forest of Dean and will be a "homely and rural" design.

"In Britain we are reliant on road transport so we have to provide service stations," said Sarah Dunning, chief executive of Westmorland. "We don't feel responsible for that. But we can say to ourselves what kind of experience do we want to create. We don't have franchises so instead of a Kentucky Fried Chicken and Marks & Spencer, we have cafes with home-made food.

"Whatever there is a lot of in Gloucestershire there will be a lot of on the menu. Everything will be fresh and made on the site. In the sandwiches it will be local goat's cheese, not of unknown origin, with artisan chutney in there as well."

The developer claims 70% of all meat, dairy, eggs and bakery products will be sourced from the region. The shops will be stocked by the produce of at least 60 local and regional businesses while 10% of the energy will come from on-site renewable technologies. Staff will be bussed in to reduce car journeys and more than half of all catering and retail waste will be recycled or composted on site for use in the gardens.

"We are not decorating a normal petrol station," said Glenn Howells, the architect. "This is more fundamental. This is the best possible motorway service station with the present fuel systems but is also designed so we can react nimbly to changes in the available fuels."

But there is opposition. Some say the green claims for the project are no more than window dressing and the planning meeting, held at the Stroud council offices yesterday, was followed by acrimonious exchanges between environmentalists and the landowners and developers.

John Marjoram, a Green Party councillor, said he was very disappointed by the decision, and said while he "couldn't fault them on design, whatever you do to disguise it it's still a motorway service area". He said the project was akin to trying to design a more sustainable airport: "The bottom line is that there will be more planes in the sky."