VILLAGERS have demonstrated against plans for a recycling plant near a landfill site at Rufforth, near York.

About a score of residents staged a protest yesterday at the entrance to Harewood Whin as members of City of York Council's planning committee turned up for a site visit.

The committee will tomorrow consider a proposal by Yorwaste Ltd to open a domestic materials recycling facility and a waste transfer station to the south of the landfill site.

The council says it has received 51 letters of objection as well as opposition from Rufforth and Knapton Parish Council, which claimed the applicants had failed to demonstrate the 'very special circumstances' needed to justify the plant being based within the Green Belt.

The parish council also said the development would give rise to further problems of noise, odour and traffic nuisance.

The protesters claimed yesterday that the development was just the latest of a series of attempted incursions into the Green Belt at Rufforth and said it would lead to even more heavy lorries driving along the B1224 through the village to get to the site.

Resident and village shopkeeper Frank Di Lorenzo also claimed that when the landfill site was opened in the 1980s, villagers had been promised there would be no more development of the site.

He said residents wanted a public inquiry to be held into the plans.

Council officials have recommended councillors to refer the application to the Secretary of State, who could call it in for an inquiry.

The officials say that if it is not called in, the application should be deferred pending satisfactory completion of a legal agreement securing a series of measures to ameliorate the impact.

They say that while the scheme is indeed inappropriate within the Green Belt, a case for 'very special circumstances' had been put forward which was on balance felt to be acceptable.

They also say that although it is impossible in planning terms to enforce the routing of lorries away from Rufforth, the applicant had agreed to provide CCTV control of the site access to record from which direction vehicles were approaching the site.

"The site operators would then be able to enforce by contract routeing of vehicles, as far as they are able to do so." The operators also said the site access could re-designed to make it as difficult as possible to enter and leave through Rufforth.