Up in smoke

As Rona Fairhead prepares to wind down as BBC Chair in 2017 (once recovered from learning who Theresa May and Karen Bradley preferred to do the job), husband Tom is still having trouble with his planned giant waste plant at Rivenhall in Essex - this time over chimney height.

He's been trying to set up a waste burning, burying and recycling operation at the former RAF airfield since the 1990s. Most planning issues have been resolved with the local authorities, and work has begun clearing trees from the site - but now the Environment Agency has said that his proposed chimney, at 35 metres, is not best practice, and suggests a stack at least twice as high, and possibly up to 120m. That, of course, would have a planning impact - it could well be one of the highest structures in Essex - and Mr Fairhead's team have rejected going bigger on grounds of cost and delay.