Sir – In Reg Little’s recent article on the wisdom of Oxfordshire County Council’s one-way street to incineration (Feature, May 7) he cites health as being the campaigners’ strongest card.

Health fears are important, but equally important is the OCC’s total lack of public consultation on incineration and other means of disposing of waste once all efforts have been made to recycle.

The UK’s own policy on sustainable waste management (Waste Strategy 2000) states that ‘local authorities are expected to consult with their communities both on their waste management strategies and plans and on any new schemes to ensure local communities understand the need to manage the waste they produce; have a say in deciding the best solutions for managing it; (and) gain economic value from recovering valuable materials from their waste.’ In following this guidance, OCC have been wholly negligent.

Also important, had OCC decided to listen to their local communities, they might have discovered that alternative technologies exist that are cheaper, more flexible, less environmentally damaging and hugely more publicly acceptable.

The current situation is not made any better when neither of the two waste companies concerned (at both Ardley and Sutton Courtenay) will rule out bringing in extra waste from outside Oxfordshire over the course of their 25-year contracts in order to ensure further the commercial success of their 300,000-tonnes-per-annum operations.

WRG, at Sutton Courtenay, have already applied for an extra 75,000 tonnes of waste to be imported from West Berkshire, Reading, Bracknell and Wokingham. This also seems to be at a time when Oxfordshire’s annual waste is actually declining. In answer to the question, ‘has OCC got the best possible deal for its Oxfordshire constituents?’ the answer has to be a resounding ‘No’, and, if not the best deal for Oxfordshire, then for whom? Clearly, West Berkshire, Reading, Bracknell etc must be delighted. Anyone else?

Edmund Rowley-Williams, Sutton Courtenay