A council leader is calling in the police after receiving abusive phone calls about plans to build incinerators.

East Sussex County Council leader Peter Jones said he had received obscene calls at his home.

Mr Jones voiced fears that council officials drawing up the plans could face the same sort of intimidation if nothing was done to trace the caller.

He said: "I am not worried for myself, I can take it. What worries me is there are people putting out foul phone calls."

He said North Quay, Newhaven, and Mountfield Mine, near Robertsbridge, were the only real options for burners as the county council, as widely expected, yesterday agreed the latest draft of the plans.

But he pledged the council would make as much information as possible available to people living near the sites.

Anti-incinerator pressure group Defenders of the Ouse Valley and Estuary (DOVE) staged a demonstration outside the chamber as councillors arrived for the meeting.

Demonstrators called on the council, together with its partner authority in Brighton and Hove, to scrap incinerators and called for a move towards zero waste.

Inside, Seaford councillor Jon Freeman said: "Monster incinerators would run 24 hours a day and they need to be killed.

"The feeling is incinerators must produce toxins in the atmosphere. In my opinion incineration is still a dirty business."

His call for an independent investigation of the health and environmental impact of burners before they were included in the plans was voted down.

Councillors did back a Tory amendment that called for an assessment to accompany any future planning application.

Joelle van Tinteren, of DOVE, condemned the abusive phone calls.

She said: "It does not make any sense to behave like that, when you start being nasty people switch off."

The latest draft of the waste plans, which include a boosted recycling target of 40 per cent, will be consulted on early next year.

There will be a public inquiry before they are finally adopted.