The decision on how to deal with Oxfordshire’s excess waste was always going to be a difficult one. It was a decision that had to be taken. Doing nothing and continuing to bury the county’s excess waste at landfill sites was a far more costly option than finding an alternative.

Landfill produces the greenhouse gas methane, and the land for new rubbish dumps is simply not available. As a result, local authorities — and the council taxpayer — face the prospect of landfill taxes imposed by the Government if they exceed the ever-tightening limits laid down.

This situation has been known for years and most authorities have been reluctant to face up to it, particularly as one of the most obvious solutions on the table was to burn the excess waste.

Our county councillors will have calculated long ago that proposing an incinerator for Oxfordshire would not be popular, and, as for where it should go . . .

A cynic would argue that the position Oxfordshire County Council now finds itself in — a proposed incinerator put forward by waste operators to a ‘technology neutral’ council that simply invited solutions, and two sites that have both been refused planning permission, leaving a Government-appointed planning inspector to decide the best location — was exactly where it wanted to be.

Not only can it say that it did not propose incineration as the means of dealing with Oxfordshire’s excess waste, it can also wash its hands of the decision about where the incinerator should go.

In other words, the people of Oxfordshire will have had no say in how the county’s excess waste is dealt with, nor will they have had a say on where any resulting plant should go.