Deadlocked waste plans are preventing voters from scrutinising two councils' spending plans.

A highly critical report going before Lewes District Council's senior policy-making committee today says the controversial plans will be business-led if the public continues to be kept in the dark. Both councils propose to spend more than £1 billion of public money.

The report says the council is "seriously concerned" about the deadlock, while the lack of consultation on the £1 billion private finance initiative (PFI) contract is "extremely unsatisfactory". The plans, being drawn-up jointly by East Sussex County Council and Brighton and Hove Council, have been on hold since December when they were rejected by county councillors.

Since then there has been little progress towards redrafting the proposals, which should

have been published for consultation in January. Unless the public is consulted, the Lewes District Council report says a planning application might be the first anybody hears about where an incinerator, or other waste disposal facility, would be built - giving residents only a few weeks to object.

Council leader Ann De Vecchi said: "At the moment we are just being shut out." The two larger authorities are also criticised for not commissioning a report into the environmental and health effects of an incinerator in the Ouse valley, despite county councillors voting for a study.

Lewes district is the most likely site for one of two incinerators in the western half

of the county, either at Newhaven or at Beddingham. Mountfield Mine, near Robertsbridge, is earmarked for a burner in the east of the county.

The deadlock has not stopped East Sussex and Brighton and Hove councils winning £49 million of Government cash towards the scheme. They have also begun the tendering for the contract, worth an estimated £1 billion over 25 years, and expect to draw-up a shortlist of companies in the autumn.

Meanwhile, the two councils are set to establish a separate committee to pursue the PFI contract, independently of the body that drew-up the waste plans. Alan McCarthy, Brighton and Hove Council's environment director, said landfill sites were likely to be full by 2005 and it was imperative there should be no further delays.

The move has angered critics. Brighton and Hove councillor Joyce Edmond-Smith said: "This seems to make it clear that the consultation process has gone by the board."

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