Waste policies on incinerators and recycling are wrong and should be rethought, according to senior councillors.

David Rogers, East Sussex County Council's leader, and Ken Bodfish, the councillor likely to take the helm at Brighton and Hove City Council, are calling for radical changes.

The plans, drawn up by both councils, went to public consultation last autumn when 90 per cent of people who commented voiced their opposition to incineration.

Coun Rogers, who represents Newhaven for the Lib Dems and faces an election in June, said: "People want to see much higher levels of recycling, including kerbside collection and are looking to the Government to support this with the necessary funding.

"When this is coupled with continuing concern about incinerators then the message is unambiguous, the policies are wrong and must be changed."

The incinerators, proposed for North Quay, Newhaven, and Mountfield Mine, near Robertsbridge, have been the focus of increasingly strident opposition.

Coun Bodfish said: "I am not happy with rushing into incineration because I think there is enough evidence to call that into doubt."

He is so far the only candidate for the leadership of Labour-controlled Brighton and Hove City Council, which will be decided next month.

Both councillors echoed the concerns about burners which recently prompted MPs on the House of Commons environment committee to say widespread reliance on incineration was unsustainable, the health risks unknown and regulation poor.

Brighton and Hove City Council has been unyielding in its support for an incinerator at Newhaven, to burn waste from Brighton and Hove and the western half of East Sussex.

Coun Bodfish said waste policies should be drawn up regionally, rather than on a county-by-county basis.

It is an approach likely to find favour in Prime Minister Tony Blair's push towards more regional government.

A regional rather than county-based plan could unlock sites such as the disused Shoreham cement works, at Upper Beeding, for incinerators to burn refuse from Brighton and Hove and East Sussex, whish is a move that would do little to defuse the controversy surrounding burners.

West Sussex County Council has already identified the land as a possible site for an incinerator to burn its rubbish.

Parish councillor Joyce Shaw said: "The parish of Beeding already has three tips and if we have an incinerator in the cement works we will become the tip of West Sussex."