Sir – It is harsh of county council leader Keith Mitchell to liken you to someone who arrives to bayonet the wounded when the fighting is safely over (Letters, October 29).

It is your newspaper, not County Hall’s glossy Oxon News, which has kept the public informed of the intention to dispose of our waste by incineration.

It was through you that I first learned that the council and a commercial operator were linked in plans to burn 300,000 tonnes of waste a year just a kilometre upwind of my village.

Whether the responsibility lies with the professional officers or our ruling cabinet, two flaws have haunted the process: the failure to engage the public and the decision (or indecision) to be “technology neutral”.

The consultation exercise in 2006 so successfully buried the controversial questions beneath jargon and platitudes that it produced only 120 responses on methods of disposal (80 per cent of them opposed to incineration).

The neutral technology stance, our officers tell us, enabled the bidders for the contract to put forward “the most appropriate solutions for the county”. Can it really be good practice to depend on the advice of those who stand to make huge profits from its acceptance?

Mr Mitchell challenges you to say what Oxfordshire should do now. Many have argued for months that the council should stop reciting its list of incinerators built in the past and find out for itself why so many other authorities, irrespective of political colour, are turning to newer, more sophisticated technologies.

It cannot be insignificant that several of the councillors who voted against the planning applications last month were newly elected and brought fresh minds to the officers’ claims that a need for these particular facilities was sufficient to overturn established planning policies.

Christopher Owen, Appleford