Residents battling to stop Railtrack building a massive quarry near their homes have been backed by Oxford East MP Andrew Smith.

The employment minister has spelled out the extent of public outrage to his Government colleague Planning Minister Nick Raynsford.

Mr Raynsford is the minister who will decide on Oxfordshire County Council's call for an Article 4 direction, which would would force Railtrack to seek planning permission for the 200,000 tonne ballast stockpile it is building at Hinksey sidings. Mr Smith told the Oxford Mail: "I underlined to Nick Raynsford that local people feel it is too close to homes, is in the Green Belt and will be noisy, dusty and visually intrusive.

"He must work to strict rules of fairness in considering all the evidence. "But be assured that I left him in no doubt about residents' understandable objections and just how strongly Oxford feels about this."

The MP met a delegation from the Stop the Quarry Action Group yesterday to update them on his part in the campaign.

Railtrack angered the county council by going ahead with the dump in advance of the Minister's decision.

David Young, the council's director of Environmental Services, said: "We wrote and asked them not to go ahead with the development until the Secretary of State had decided.

"In acting as they are, Railtrack are ignoring the clearly-expressed wishes of local people and the county council."

He warned that Railtrack might regret their action, with pressure mounting for the Government to abolish Railtrack's special rights to carry out development without planning permission.

A Railtrack spokesman said the company had begun work because the consultation period with the council had ended.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.