Councils have voted to sign a £1 billion waste contract which includes controversial plans to build an incinerator at Newhaven.

Brighton and Hove City Council and East Sussex County Council backed building a burner at North Quay as part of the deal.

However, council leaders said they would oppose plans to build waste facilities at Pebsham, Bexhill, included in the package by contractor Onyx Aurora.

An attempt by the Green Party to delay signing the 25-year contract until after a public inquiry was rejected.

The councils said landfill sites would be full by 2007 and there was a pressing need to find new ways of dealing with household waste.

They said targets for recycling between 33 and 35 per cent of waste were challenging, modern incinerators were safe and the deal represented the best environmental option of the eight studied.

County council leader Peter Jones said the contract was flexible enough to take into account changes in the law or the findings of the public inquiry.

The four-month hearing into waste disposal plans that underpin the contract does not start until May. Its findings are not expected until mid-2004.

Onyx Aurora wants to build an incinerator at North Quay, opening in 2009, and an anaerobic digestion plant at Pebsham, to start operating after 2012.

The firm is not expected to apply for planning permission at either site until after the results of the inquiry are known.

It could, however, seek consent for an industrial-scale composting plant at Golden Cross, near Hailsham, sooner.

Planning applications for recycling centres at North Quay, Pebsham, Hollingdean Depot in Brighton and Maresfield Camp, Maresfield, could also come before the inquiry's findings.

Only two of the sites, North Quay and Hollingdean Depot, are included in the proposals to be examined at the hearing.

Green councillor Keith Taylor said an incinerator would inhibit recycling and produce dangerous pollution.

If the inquiry rejected building at North Quay, the contract would be unworkable.

He said: "The reality is without the incineration plant the contract would be in tatters and we are going to be left high and dry with an increasing waste problem."

The councils expect to sign the private finance initiative contract before the end of the month.

Thursday March 13 2003