Parents will take their children out of school so they can attend a protest against a waste transfer station.

Pupils from Downs Infant School in Ditchling Road, Brighton, will join their mothers and fathers at the demonstration outside a council planning meeting on Monday.

Members of Brighton and Hove City Council's planning committee will consider waste company Veolia's proposal for a transfer station and recycling facility in Hollingdean Lane, Brighton.

The site is close to Downs Infant School and parents have raised concerns about their children's health.

Two weeks ago the school had to close all the doors and windows when arsonists set light to the asbestos-ridden old meat market in Hollingdean Lane.

Sandra Staufer, from campaign group Dump The Dump, will be taking her son Njokul out of school.

She hopes the demonstration will show planning committee members the level of concern about the proposals.

She said: "The children have been supporting us all along because it's about them.

"They are going to make a stand and be counted."

Melanie White, another Dump The Dump member with children at the school, said she thought up to 50 parents might take their children out.

Regine Kruger, head of Downs Infant, said she would not encourage parents to remove their children from school for the day.

She said: "That would be anti-educational. However if individual parents come up to me I will authorise it.

"It's a matter of people taking them out on the day and signing the exit book explaining their absence."

Children will also take part in a demonstration on Saturday organised by Dump The Dump.

The group has created a wooden frame the exact length and width of the 44-ton trucks that would carry rubbish to the site.

A crowd of children will stand inside the frame and carry it along part of the route the lorries would take to demonstrate the impact they might have on traffic.

Campaigners also claim the lorries will not fit properly through a railway bridge at the bottom of The Dip, which they must pass through to reach the site.

The transfer station is part of the Waste Local Plan for East Sussex and Brighton and Hove.

The rubbish sorted at the Hollingdean site would then be transported to Newhaven, where it would be burnt in a proposed incinerator.

All the landfill sites in Sussex are filling up fast and the Government has told local authorities they must find new ways of dealing with waste.

Residents in Brighton and Newhaven have been campaigning against the plans since they were announced.

The planning meeting takes place at Hove Town Hall, Norton Road, Hove, on Monday at 1pm and the truck demonstration will start at 11am by the railway bridge in The Dip.