It has been a long time coming, but County Hall has finally publicly admitted what its plan is to deal with the waste left over in the county after recycling.

There will be little surprise that it is to go for the incineration of waste. The council's wariness about going public suggested that the unpopular burning solution was the most likely. To be fair to the council, it was also overwhelmingly what the waste industry has proposed.

We cannot claim to be experts on incineration or on any other way of dealing with excess waste. Incineration may well be what the county council tells us it is - widely used and a tried and tested technology.

What we do know, however, is that the county council will have a battle on its hands when it comes to determining a site for an incinerator.

No one will want it in their backyard, and they will be joined in their protests by local environmentalists.

Oxfordshire's incinerator will not be in operation until 2012 at the earliest. That is some years off and Oxfordshire will face fines for its failure to cut the amount of waste going to landfill sites in the meantime.

A site will need to be identified soon, as the arguments over planning could lead to yet more delays.

What many will find extraordinary is that the county council will commission the contract for the waste that it has to dispose of and is the authority responsible for taking the planning decision on an incinerator.

There is a conflict of interest - as there is in many other planning decisions taken by the county council for similar reasons.

This is one decision that really should be taken out of its hands and put before a public inquiry.