Sir – The county council decision to approve a waste incinerator at Ardley is a disgrace. It is unnecessary, expensive and a blot on the Oxfordshire countryside.

The 82-metre tall chimneys and the incinerator itself will bring in waste from at least as far as Northampton, Reading and Swindon. Why a 300,000-tonne-a-year incinerator is needed for Oxfordshire’s 200,000 tonnes of mixed waste is difficult to understand.

That the 35-year permission was presented as ‘temporary’, when a year ago 25 years was said to be permanent, is bizarre.

All credit to the two Conservative county councillors, George Reynolds and David Nimmo-Smith, who voted with us two Labour councillors, against the incinerator.

Shame to the eight other Tories and two Liberal Democrat councillors who voted to allow the scheme, especially those Tories who had opposed an almost identical planning application a year ago.

In the last two years, residual waste in Oxfordshire has fallen by ten per cent and is continuing to fall.

Labour favours a Mechanical and Biological Plant to deal with residual waste and increasing rates of recycling.

But in any case, rural Ardley is not the place for an industrial incinerator.

It is now vital that we persuade the Secretary of State to call-in this outrageous decision and rule against the Viridor eyesore. Landfill must end, but setting fire to refuse which is trucked the length and breadth of the county, adding to CO2 emissions, is hardly better.

John Sanders, Labour county councillor for Cowley and Littlemore

John Tanner, Labour county councillor for Isis