Calderdale councillors are calling on new Government ministers to pause and review incinerator applications – a move which might halt a highly controversial one proposed in Sowerby Bridge.

Residents have suffered “distress” for almost a decade due to a company’s proposal to run a small waste incineration plant (SWIP) in Sowerby Bridge, with many in the town and the Ryburn valley opposing the proposals and raising concerns for their health, councillors heard.

Councillors from across Calderdale’s political parties united behind measures which also calls on the new Government to assess whether there is a need for any more incinerators or whether there are actually already enough in the UK to meet demand for their processes.

Conservative group leader Coun Steven Leigh (Ryburn), said councillors believed the incinerator would be a danger to health – a conclusion members heard planning inspector John Woolcock effectively reached last year when refusing a crucial environmental permit for operating the incinerator.

Calder Valley Skip Hire (CVSH) wants to run the plant and a complicated history stretching back nearly 10 years has seen Calderdale Council refuse planning permission for the incinerator, that decision being overturned on appeal to the planning inspectorate, and objectors winning the right to a judicial review of a subsequent decision by the council’s cabinet to grant an environmental permit – after which the permit was quashed.

Following this, the status of the permit application was deemed to be “undetermined”, hence the company’s appeal, which Mr Woolcock dismissed, and now the new application.

The company has argued the SWIP would not pose a danger to human health.

Councillors heard legislation as it stands means there is currently no limit to the number of applications for the permit the company can make.

Coun Leigh said: “It’s a very, very serious issue about the incinerator and danger posed to human health.

“Hopefully there will be a major breakthrough for all the people who have been saying things about the incinerator – everyone is against it, it stinks.”

Coun Simon Ashton (Lab, Sowerby Bridge) said it had been a long and distressing process for residents.

“Residents have been living in knowledge an incinerator could be operating in their ward for nine years and counting,” he said.