I FEEL I must respond to the letter from Malcolm Victory (Your Letters, August 23) to correct inaccuracies that give your readers a completely false impression of the actions of Malvern Hills District Council.

His letter about the Newland Household Waste Site implies the district council is responsible for the impending temporary closure and has had 18 months to provide alternative facilities. This is wrong! It is the County Council that provides the site and it is its contractor that is undertaking the redevelopment that gives rise to the closure.

Malvern Hills district councillors have expressed concern over the effect of the closure and detailed reports have been presented to this council's executive and overview and scrutiny committees on what action could be taken to minimise the impact on the community. These meetings were open to the public and the reports and minutes are available on our website. All the issues raised by Mr Victory were considered at length in these meetings.

The district council has made a point of actively seeking alternative means of providing a household waste service to the local community during the closure period. We have worked with the County Council to explore every practicable way forward, including getting a commitment from the County Council to make funds available to support our initiatives. These include a free bulky waste collection service to residents and free skips to be offered to parish and town councils in affected areas. Publicity will be issued in the near future.

Mr Victory suggests the district council owns land opposite the offices of Elgar Housing Association. This is wrong, we do not. The council only owns one plot of land elsewhere on Enigma Park and that has covenants that specifically prevent us for using it as a waste site.

To establish a large temporary site would require planning consent and licensing by the Environment Agency. The licence requirements are such that it would not be an economic proposition to develop a site just for the period that the Newland site is closed. Mr Victory's comment about the cost of fly tipping dwarfing the cost of a temporary waste transfer station is again clearly inaccurate.

I trust your readers will see from my response that Malvern Hills District Council is making ever effort to assist the community during the closure of the Newland site, bearing in mind that the site is a service provided by the County Council.

COLIN DAVIS, strategic director, Malvern Hills District Council, Church Street, Malvern.