Tessa Munt: “It’s becoming very clear to me that a great many of our councils are being misled and, in some cases, royally ripped off…”

I realised that the governments of the past 15 years had very little idea what was happening to all the UK’s scrap aluminium.

This is a dangerous and nationally significant exploitation of planning loopholes.

It’s economic madness that nothing is really being done to stop aluminium being sent to China and the Far East, when it should be coming right here and to other UK recycling facilities.

For far too long profit driven scrap merchants have sold our aluminium abroad without any consideration for the national interest.