CUTLERY, scissors and bottle tops found strewn across 400 acres of farmland left residents of a West Oxfordshire village stunned.

People in Bladon are furious over the apparent high levels of rubbish and contaminates that were spread in compost over farmland, owned by Blenheim Estates, in the village last month. As well as the environmental impact, they fear some of the sharper items present a hazard to children and dogs.

Agrivert, which leases the land and processes the compost from Oxfordshire's garden waste, conceded that there was a lot of unwanted material spread on the fields, but maintained its compost was of a high standard.

John Stevenson, 74, was walking his dog through fields near his Bladon home when he said he saw rubbish across the ground as far as he could see.

He said: “This shouldn’t be allowed to happen. I don’t understand how all that stuff got through the filtering process. The whole thing needs to be looked at.”

Mr Stevenson said the compost included a range of plastic materials, including bottle tops, babies’ dummies and pieces of plastic bags. Other waste included cutlery, which ranged from teaspoons to knife blades.

Mum-of-two Amie Tibble, 44, who lives nearby, said: "My two children always out there running around and playing – but this rubbish is dangerous and they might hurt themselves."

Commercial director at Agrivert Harry Waters said the company follows the British Standards Institute PAS 100, an industry standard for composts.

He said that Agrivert, which has a plant in Cassington, has a rigorous filtering process but that unwanted materials would continue to find their way into it so long as people continued to put the wrong things in their green waste bins.

The company, Mr Waters continued, did accept that unwanted materials like plastics were at a particularly high quantity in Bladon, and said Agrivert sent out a team to clean the fields in early April.

He said: “The compost that is spread there is all generated from Oxfordshire's green waste. Within that, we unfortunately get residents who put the wrong things in their green bins.

“We go through quite a long sieving process to get the material out but it doesn’t get it all out. Unfortunately people put all kinds of things in their green bins.”

A spokesman for Blenheim Estates said: "We were made aware of concerns raised by residents of Bladon at the beginning of April, and these were immediately addressed by our tenants through liaison with residents, the parish council and ourselves.

"Using garden compost and food waste as part of a sustainable farming system is a practice that is closely regulated by the Environment Agency and should be encouraged. We are working closely with our tenants to ensure the product used is of the highest quality."