Councillors have said it is too soon to rule out exploring a revival of one of the most controversial proposals in Norfolk in recent years - an incinerator to burn the county's waste.
The Reform administration at County Hall is reviewing spending across the authority's departments, including how much is being spent dealing with waste, as it looks to find millions of pounds in savings.
More than 204,000 tonnes of Norfolk rubbish is incinerated each year, but this is done at plants in Suffolk and Bedfordshire.
That is because, after a long-running and costly saga more than a decade ago, there is no such plant in Norfolk - and a council ban on such facilities.
That has now prompted opposition councillors to question whether Reform's ongoing review would see them consider whether an incinerator in Norfolk would save taxpayers money.
The issue was raised at a meeting of the council's infrastructure and development select committee where the council's waste performance was under the spotlight.
Liberal Democrat county councillor Rob Colwell said: “This council has had a rather turbulent relationship with regards to the issue of incineration.
"As we have a new administration here, I was hoping to seek reassurance that this council still opposes new incineration being built in this county.”
Pat Gould, cabinet member for countryside, coast and culture, said the administration had not made any decisions on that issue at all.
That prompted independent councillor Alexandra Kemp to say: “I really think there should be a resounding no to reassessing that kind of policy and I would look to the administration to make that kind of statement very, very quickly indeed.”
Tom Dickerson, Reform cabinet member for highways and transport, said: “I think just to clarify, we've only been in administration a few weeks. We’ve got so much to look at that it hasn't even come on the radar.
“It's not something we're looking at, but we will look at everything. We have to look at every single option and we'd be foolish not to, but it's not on our radar, so please let me emphasise that.”
Grahame Bygrave, director of highways, transport and waste, added that if there were to be a fresh debate about whether to have an incinerator in Norfolk it would “take years”.
He pointed out that the county council - and all other councils in Norfolk - are due to be axed and replaced by three new ones in 2028, so such a debate would be “well beyond the life of Norfolk County Council”.
However, Mr Colwell said it was still an important question to pose, given Reform is hoping to stop local government reorganisation through a legal challenge.
The ban on allowing incinerators within Norfolk has been in place since 2014.
It followed a decision to scrap plans for an incinerator County Hall was planning to build at Saddlebow, near King's Lynn.
The plan, which was put forward when the Conservatives controlled the council, was ditched by the so-called rainbow alliance of Labour, the Liberal Democrats and UKIP.
That left the council having to pay more than £30m in compensation to the company Cory Wheelabrator which would have built it and run it.
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