CAMPAIGNERS fear Oxfordshire could become a dumping ground for other people’s waste as a £20m plant likely to process London rubbish looks set to be built.

Oxfordshire County Council officers have recommended plans for the facility between Sutton Courtenay and Appleford are approved despite strong opposition from residents and councillors.

The 26,800 sq m plant, the equivalent of about five football pitches, would recycle 220,000 tonnes of waste every year – most of which is likely to come in by train from outside the county, say campaigners.

Waste Recycling Group (WRG) says the plant could treat Oxfordshire’s commercial and industrial waste or household rubbish from West London and Berkshire.

An incinerator, which will burn up to 300,000 tonnes of waste a year, is set to be built in Ardley, near Bicester, and process the majority of Oxfordshire’s waste.

County councillors will now have to go against their officers’ advice to stop the plans at a planning and regulations committee meeting on Monday, September 12.

WRG’s plan for the waste treatment plant on the landfill site off the B4016 came after its bid for an incinerator there was rejected in 2009.

Sutton Courtenay campaigner Dr Pauline Wilson said: “Oxfordshire is becoming a dumping ground for everybody else’s waste. Why is this allowed to happen? I cannot believe that in representing the interests of the people of Oxfordshire our county councillors have any option but to throw it out.”

The plant would increase the amount of waste being brought in to the Sutton Courtenay site from 600,000 to 905,000 tonnes a year and extend site activities until 2036.

Vale of White Horse District Council planning committee voted unanimously against the plan last month.

Gervase Duffield, district council member for Sutton Courtenay and Appleford, said: “It’s an enormous building and a huge eyesore. Everyone in the Vale is unanimously against it.

“There will be precious little waste left over from Oxfordshire so they will have to get it from further afield to make the plant sustainable.

“There is no real need for it. There is no advantage in it.”

Sutton Courtenay Parish Council chairman Michael Jenkins said he was disappointed and said residents had had enough of living close to a waste site.

He said: “We have been plagued by flies, noise, dust, and all sorts of things for many years.”

The plant would recycle waste into fuel for coal-fired power stations by separating, shredding and drying it to produce a solid substance which can be burned.

County council deputy director of growth and infrastructure Martin Tugwell said in his report the plant was preferable to landfill and would smell less.

WRG’s planning and estates manager Alan Bulpin said: “It is a facility that is required, as Oxfordshire County Council’s planning department have clearly accepted.”

As reported in yesterday’s the Oxford Mail campaigners are hoping to launch a High Court challenge against the decision to allow the Ardley incinerator to be built.