OTTERY residents will not be left without a recycling facility should Tipton St John s Woods Farm centre close.

OTTERY residents will not be left without a recycling facility should Tipton St John's Woods Farm centre close.

The Herald reported this month how it is believed East Devon District Council has identified the county council owned site as suitable for housing gypsies and travellers in its bids to meet Government demands to provide increased pitches by 2011.

This week Devon County Council moved to allay fears that services will be lost, and said that while Woods Farm is "not deemed suitable to cope with increasing volumes of recyclable material", its planning permission runs until 2012 and no decision has been made over its closure.

Ottery county councillor Roger Giles said there is "no question" that if the Tipton site closes, it will be replaced with "something more suitable".

Cllr Giles added: "The existing facility at Woods Farm is inadequate to serve both Ottery and Sidmouth communities. It is constricted in terms of space and people are often queuing up to get in there."

"I have been pressing DCC to look for a better site. If we want to have expanded recycling then we need to have better larger sites. Ideally we would have one serving Ottery and one serving Sidmouth."

Sidmouth councillor Stuart Hughes said �1.3million will be set aside in DCC's capital budget by 2012 to provide a "state of the art" recycling centre.