The Green Party says environment bosses have failed to consider the “real world” impact the proposed Rivenhall incinerator will have on air quality.

The Braintree and Witham branch leader James Abbott is the latest figure to hit out at the Environment Agency’s decision to issue a draft permit for Gent Fairhead and Co’s plan to build an incinerator and 35m-high chimney at Rivenhall Airfield.

The applicant has planning permission to build the incinerator but cannot begin building work until it gets an environmental permit.

A consultation on issuing the permit closes in two weeks’ time and the Environment Agency says it will consider all responses before making a final decision.

Experts say they are prepared to approve the incinerator because operator Indaver is proposing to use cleaner technology which will make pollution omitted from the site “insignificant”.

But Mr Abbott, who is head of the Green and Independent group on Braintree Council, says the Environment Agency has failed to look at other causes of pollution which will be caused by the incinerator, such as delivery lorries.

He said: “This plant would be a major waste incinerator built in the countryside with over 400 HGV movements per day, burning nearly 600,000 tonnes of waste per year and producing about the same amount of CO2 a year.

Essex County Council refused planning permission for a higher stack but also said the plant was not needed for Essex and would result in more waste being trucked into the county on long distances.

“Air quality is a key health issue and although waste incinerators produce less pollution than they used to, the fact remains that local air quality will fall if this plant is built and there will be no ‘real world’ monitoring of pollution as it affects local villages, only monitoring of what goes up the chimney and ‘models’ of deposited pollution will be used.”

Mr Abbott has also joined calls for the Environment Agency to host more public events before the consultation closes on Thursday, February 6.

He specifically wants to see a drop-in session hosted in Silver End, which he says will be affected the most by the incinerator.

The Environment Agency says it has no plans to hold further public events but has invited members of the public to visit its offices in Feering to find out more information about the incinerator.

Officers from the agency who attended the drop-in session at Rivenhall Village Hall told the Times they were unable to look at external pollution factors such as deliveries to the incinerator, and the permit conditions centre around the processing of waste at the site and pollutants directly omitted from the chimney.