Rob GarrattMore than 800 people have signed a petition to stop an electricity substation being built next to a Norfolk village.Rob Garratt

More than 800 people have signed a petition to stop an electricity substation being built next to a Norfolk village.

The names have been added to a pile of nearly 100 objection letters to Breckland Council about the plans to build the substation on more than 40 acres of land at Little Dunham, near Swaffham.

The campaigners' cause also appears to have picked up weight from a holding objection from Norfolk County Council's highways team, which says the developers need to do more to ensure HGVs will be safely able to get in and out of the village during the four- year construction period.

Project co-ordinator Mark Petterson, of developers Warwick Energy, said the highways concerns had already been addressed and would not prove an obstacle when the matter goes before Breckland's development control committee, at a date yet to be set.

However, objector Paul Dennis 54, a geochemist who lives on Little Dunham's Station Road, said: 'It won't be a village any more; it will be an industrial site.

'I've spoken to people in the village who say they will leave if it is built and I will be tempted to move. It won't be the same village any more and it will change materially the way I feel about it.'

Locals say the 42-acre substation site is nearly the same size as the village itself, but the developers say the substation would only take up 22 acres of the site and would be 'sensitively screened' to minimise the impact of the views and noise.

Mr Petterson said: 'The objectors are certainly spreading their message fairly wide, but at the end of the say they still haven't got an objection that stands up.'

The sub-station is part of a �1.3bn project and would act as a base to redistribute electricity from wind turbines to the national grid.

For more on the campaign see www.little-dunham.co.uk. The planning application in full can be viewed at www.breckland.gov.uk/planning.