Residents of Hollingdean and surrounding areas have until April 19 to appeal against plans to build a waste transfer station, with some recycling activity, at the former abbatoir site on Hollingdean Lane.

It would seem Brighton and Hove City Council and its partner in grime, Veolia (formerly Onyx), have offered a new, improved version of the plan.

The original generated several thousand letters of complaint about the noise, dirt and traffic pollution and increased traffic volume which this industrial-sized solution to our rubbish problem would have on a busy community, on the doorstep of an infants school.

The new plan is no more than cosmetic tweaking - a slight reduction in tonnage, with the option of expanding in the future; the same number of HGV movements and, yes, it's still sitting beneath a school playground.

I don't care what colour they paint it - it's still going to stink, it's still going to be noisy and it's still unfair and ill-judged.

Residents have until April 19 (which includes school holidays and the Easter period) to lodge objections because the previous 3,000 letters opposing the waste dump plan simply don't count.

Would this be the real reason for such a half-hearted excuse for a second plan?

I would therefore urge every resident to write again to Brighton and Hove City Council and kick up a stink about this "new, improved" dump.

Otherwise, we'll all end up choking on the putrid stink of rotting rubbish and corporate cynicism.

-Maggie Clune, Brighton