The new owner of the giant Honda site in South Marston will have to provide a study on how increasing the use of the land as part of its £700m investment will impact wildlife, the general environment and – particularly – the neighbours.

Speculative developer Panattoni has bought the airfield site which will see the end of Honda’s production of cars on Friday, June 30.

The company wants to expand its use dramatically. It is looking at building premises for industrial and warehousing and logistics totalling 672,000 sq m.

That’s more than 10 times the total floor space than the huge warehouse and delivery centre the company is building for Amazon at Symmetry Park further south, which is 58,000 sq m.

Development director of Panattoni UK James Watson said the £700m the company is putting into the site is the largest speculative investment the company has ever made.

The company says development includes access roads, parking drainage and open space.

It has not yet made a full application – but it has put in an application for an environmental impact scoping opinion – very often a precursor to a full application.

It asked planners at Swindon Borough Council what information it would need to provide about the impact of the increase of activity on site as part of its application.

And planning officers have said they want to know a lot.

The list of what Panattoni should include in its impact assessment includes: “Daylight, sunlight and overshadowing, unless the application plans include a layout which addresses this concern, climate change, socio-economics and community, traffic and transport, air quality, noise and vibration, historic environment, landscape and visual effect, flood risk, ecology and biodiversity and the cumulative effects” of the development.

That’s more work than Panattoni had originally envisaged.

Most of what it suggested it should write about was agreed but planners wanted more on climate change and the possible impact on neighbours.

In Panattoni’s application for the planners’ opinion, it said an assessment on overshadowing would not be needed.

It said: “The scale and massing of the development will not cause changes to daylight or sunlight availability or cause overshadowing of residents or amenity space.

"It is therefore proposed to scope this discipline out of the environmental statement."

But council planners disagreed: “Given the proximity of the boundary of the site to adjacent residential properties and the lack of detail within the scoping documents, it is not accepted on the basis of the information submitted that this would not lead to a significant effect.

“If the detail of the application indicates that structures would be set away from the eastern boundaries in particular, it is accepted that significant effects may be unlikely.”

The company’s initial assessment of the socio-economic impact says: “It is anticipated that both the construction and operational workforce would primarily be drawn from the local labour market, thereby placing no additional demand or effect on the local housing market or social infrastructure, or effects would be so small as to be insignificant.

“There will be an employment increase in short-term construction employment and long-term operational employment.”

It expects an increase in spending in businesses near the plant by both workers who build the new facilities and those who work in them when operational.