Long-suffering residents of Rodbourne Cheney who had to put up with the infamously noxious Rodbourne Pong are feeling vindicated after the official report has identified the council’s waste site at Waterside Park as the source.

But they are also aggrieved that there has been no official acknowledgement by Swindon Borough Council that they were right – and no apology for what they saw as being fobbed off for several years.

Ken Harvey, Robert Slade and Ray Burcham all live in Rodbourne Cheney not very far north east of the Waterside park complex, where until recently, the council brought the waste collected on the doorstep to be processed into industrial fuel.

Although a contract change means that operation has finished, and the famously “cheesy, vomity” stench is no longer being detected, a specially commissioned report by contractor Arup identified the site as the source of the stink.

Mr Harvey said he and many others had been telling the council that for a long time. He said: “There’s been a smell from the sewage treatment plan for a long time. But the really bad cheesy vomit smell began about six years ago, around the time the plant at Waterside Park started in 2016 or so.

“It was awful. You couldn’t sit outside in summer. You couldn’t have people come round. It really did keep a lot of people almost imprisoned in their houses.”

“We told the council it was coming from Waterside park but they kept saying it didn’t, there was a public meeting in late 2021 where they said there was no smell there at all.”

Having been proved correct, Mr Slade said: ”We have had no communication at all from the council. It hasn’t said anything, that we were right, and it certainly hasn’t apologised, either for the smell or telling us we were mistaken for all that time.

“I’m pretty angry about it.”

Mr Slade added: “It’s like now the smell has gone the council has forgotten all about it, it’s all finished, there’s nothing to say.

“I don’t think that’s good enough. And now the plant can be used as a storage and transfer station for the waste, will it come back, and what will the council do then?”

Councillor Kevin Parry, the council’s cabinet member for waste collection and disposal  said: “We appreciate residents will be frustrated that it has taken so long to identify the cause of the smell that had blighted their lives for so long. Although a number of residents indicated the smell was coming from the Household Waste Recycling Centre, we equally had a number of residents who felt the nearby Thames Water site was the cause. This was why we commissioned the independent report.

“We now know from the report that the smell was coming from the stack, or chimney, from the Solid Recovered Fuel plant, which has now been decommissioned. We have also installed an odour suppressant system into the waste processing area as another method of mitigating any smells from the waste transfer station, so we are hopeful the smell experienced by residents will not return." 

Rodbourne Cheney ward councillor Jim Grant, who often received many of the residents’ complaints about the stench sits on the  council’s scrutiny committee.

He said: “We have put the Arup report on to the scrutiny committee’s future work programme and it will be coming up at a meeting in the near future.

“The committee will want very much to hold the administration to account over this matter which has been a cause of real distress to many people for a long time.”