The number of lorries which will carry Norfolk waste to be burned in Suffolk is so 'insignificant' there was no need for an assessment on how it will affect A140 traffic, council bosses have said.

Norfolk County Council has signed a deal with their Suffolk counterparts to send some of the county's household waste to the incinerator – or energy from waste plant – at Great Blakenham, when it is fully operational at the end of the summer.

Suffolk will take 40,000 tonnes of waste – 20pc of Norfolk's non-recyclable rubbish – a year for at least two years, which council bosses say will save both authorities £1m a year.

Most of the waste that will be sent to Suffolk is currently sent to Aldeby landfill site near Beccles – and comes from households in north Norfolk and Great Yarmouth.

But from next month, the waste will be sent to the Great Blakenham incinerator and will travel in eight HGVs per day - all of them heading up and down the A140.

That will mean 16 trips, with each lorry able to carry up to 25 tonnes of waste. The journeys are due to start in the first week of August.

The A140 heads through Long Stratton, where there has long been calls for a bypass because of the volume of traffic.

But bosses at Norfolk County Council said they did not feel they needed to carry out an assessment of the impact the extra lorries would have on the A140.

They said the number of lorries is so small, compared with the 2,750 HGVs which currently use the road in both directions, that council officers decided that the increase was 'so insignificant' that an assessment of the impact on the road was not necessary.

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