Public consultation becomes a search for the goalposts when residents are asked about one scheme and quite a different one is put forward.

During the consultation period on the Waste Local Plan - First Deposit (November 1 - December 12, 2000), we considered nine possible locations for waste facilities.

Locally, Hangleton Bottom, Hove, was identified as a likely materials recovery facility and waste transfer station and the coal-yard adjacent to Sackville Trading Estate, Hove, was listed as having potential for road-to-rail transfer of waste.

Later, in April 2003, Brighton and Hove City and East Sussex County Councils signed a private finance initiative contract with Onyx.

It has subsequently homed in on a small number of sites. Residents in Hollingdean, Round Hill and St Peter's are now faced with the prospect of dreadful noise and pollution levels arising from Onyx's commercial preference to deal with the whole of Brighton and Hove's waste at the Hollingdean Depot.

Before winning the contract, Onyx declared its intention to build an anaerobic digestion plant at Pebsham, Bexhill.

After the contract was awarded, the anaerobic digestion plant was conveniently forgotten.

In drawing up waste plans, the councils failed to investigate alternatives to mass burning of rubbish and although they made three visits to incinerators, at no time did either council visit an anaerobic digester.

It is worth noting 90 per cent of the people who commented on the first public consultation opposed incineration. By the time of the public inquiry, feelings were just as strong.

Moreover, the basis for consultation shifted again as it became clear Onyx Aurora - with the contract secured - wanted a sole incinerator (proposed for Newhaven) to bear the brunt of local waste management.

Of course, planning options evolve as safety and cost considerations narrow them down but this is why parents with children at the Downs schools and other residents living in the vicinity of the Hollingdean Depot demand a rethink.

Our health, safety and satisfaction with our neighbourhood are at risk of being seriously undermined.

If planning is necessarily a process where goalposts are moved, let us not bury public money in a waste plan which is both damaging to our community and environmentally unsustainable.

It is time to move the goalposts in another direction.

We need much more stringent measures to limit the quantity of waste, higher targets for recycling and smaller sites not quite so close to densely-populated residential areas.

I urge the councils to change direction now, to avoid serious embarrassment later on.

-Ted Power, Brighton